


Shooting at Shadows

by yesmsmoran (elliedew)



Series: Sweet Dreams and Scattershot [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU season 3-5 may be spoilery if you haven't watched them, Abuse to Oldsmobiles, Angels, Angst, Blood and Gore, Canon Typical Violence, Demons, Depression, Eating Disorder, Food Issues, Graphic descriptions of violence, H/NO C, M/M, MAY BE TRIGGERY READ CAREFULLY, Masturbation, Mentions of self-harm, Other, Permanent Injury, Possible Squick, Post-Hell Issues, Suicidal Ideation, Temporary Character Death, Vomiting, h/c, hell issues, it's hell people what do you think happens there?, mentions of recreational drug use past and present, self destructive behavior
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-27 20:14:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 51
Words: 466,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliedew/pseuds/yesmsmoran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part Two;</p><p>They’re not HIM and if it’s not Him then he just—CAN’T.  He feels sick to his stomach just LOOKING because none of those men are Cas and he only wants CAS, but Cas isn’t real… Yet he can’t keep himself from stupidly looking for him.</p><p>(Just to clarify, the character death is temporary and canon.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Smoke Signals

**Author's Note:**

> “Deep into that darkness peering,  
> Long I stood there wondering, fearing.  
> Doubting, dreaming dreams,  
> No mortal ever dared to dream before.”
> 
> —Edgar Allan Poe—

0-0-0

Dean picks up a woman every time they stop. Sometimes they’re blonde, sometimes he’ll find an amenable red-head. Most of the time they’re brunettes with blue eyes. 

Sam notices the pattern. How can he not?

Dean has always had a soft spot for big breasted, aggressive women. Sam’s known that for years, the first time he walked in on Dean his brother had been handcuffed to the motel headboard and some puffy-haired bottle-blonde with double D’s had been riding him. 

The blonde had asked who Sam was, Dean had grumbled, hands twisting in their confines and said ‘my little brother’. The blonde had smiled at him and asked if he wanted to join in. 

Sam remembered running, remembered Dean finding him three hours later at a diner down the street and laughing at him. Telling him it was just nature, jeez. Sam didn’t think there was anything natural about tying a guy up and hooking surgical clamps to his nipples, but he’d been about fourteen at the time—hadn’t really had any experience in the matter. 

These women were different. They seemed bookish. Less curvy. They dressed more conservatively. Some of them had short, messy dark hair and didin’t really wear much makeup. 

Maybe Dean was just going for variety. God knows he’d racked up an impressive number of conquests since Cold Oak. He laughed, slapped Sam’s shoulder and said; ‘Come on, Sammy! Last year and all, can you blame me?’ Sam couldn’t, really couldn’t, so he spent quite a few nights in the impala while Dean got his preverbal ‘freak’ on. Spent quite a lot of time trying to find a way out of Dean’s deal because he couldn’t conceive of life without his big brother, even if all Dean wanted to do was have kinky, kinky sex and eat his weight in greasy food. 

“Deepfried Twinkies, Sammy! Ah, we live in a beautiful country!”

Sam felt nauseated just looking at the vaguely cylindrical shaped ‘food’. Yeah he tried one, who wouldn’t? He spent the next ten hours with heartburn so bad his belches tasted like burned popcorn. 

Dean just laughed and pelted him with Rolaids. 

0-0-0

“What do you mean you don’t think it’ll work, Bobby. It’s a demon dispelling ritual.”

There’s a knock on the window and Sam looks up, irritated, bending the screen of his laptop down incase it’s just some punk kid, he doesn’t wany anyone to know what he’s looking at. He’s right about one thing, it is a punk, but it’s just Dean. He grins, flops a newspaper against the glass and steps away, nods to a woman coming out of the diner and makes for the door. 

Sam hunches his shoulder and lowers his voice eyes locked on the door; “Look, maybe we got the translation wrong… We can’t just let Dean fry in Hell while we…” He exhales, listens to how his breath quivers and the grate of Bobby’s voice on the other end of the line.

“I’ve done it twice now and how many times have you translated the damned thing? I just don’t think it’s gonna work—”

“Well, there’s gotta be somethin’ that we—”

Dean’s smiling as he comes in.

“—Okay, yeah, no… I gotta go. Nevermind,” He snaps his phone shut and it hits the table a little harder than it should have and slams his laptop shut, “Hey!”

Dean sidles up to the opposite side of the table and motions with what he’s got in his hand; “Who was that?”

“Uh—“ Sam feels his toes curling in his shoes; “I was just ordering pizza.”

Dean stares at him, like his brain’s just locked up, he looks left and right expecting a joke and motions over his shoulder; “Dude, you do realize you’re in a restaurant?”

Sam rolls his shoulders forward, crosses his arms defensively and feels like maybe there’s something large and disgusting on his face; “Yeah, yeah… oh, yeah. I just… felt like pizza, yanno?” He grins, tries to act innocent but he can feel it sitting there on his forehead blinking like a neon sign ‘LIAR!LIAR!LIAR!’

Dean cocks an eyebrow at him, looks a little amused, “Okay, Weirdy McWeirderton,” He takes the seat across from him, drops into it like he’s not dying as they speak and slaps the paper down on the table in front of his brother. “So, I think I got somethin’.”

Sam swallows a lump that feels like a bowling ball, thinks maybe it’s his own heart descending back to his chest cavity, and takes a slow breath to get his pulse regulated again. Got something? Got what? What’s he talking about? “Yeah?”

“Cicero, Indiana… Guy falls on his own power saw.”

Sam’s nose wrinkles up, he studies the article for a moment then looks up at Dean; “And?”

Dean lifts his brows and smiles as he unrolls his cutlery. 

“What, that’s it? One power saw?” 

“Well… yeah.”

Sam nods a little, narrows his eyes and looks over it again; “And you think that this is a case?” Is Dean off his rocker? Dude falls on his saw and that’s supernatural? Well, someone break out the frickin’ salt!

Dean shrugs, holds out his hands… and doesn’t quite meet Sam’s eyes, “I don’t know, could be.”

Sam leans back in his seat a little, examines Dean’s posture, too loose, too laid back… His foot’s jiggling under the table. “I don’t know, Dean, I—“

“Alright, there’s something better in…” The grin is sudden but it relaxes Sam a little while at the same time making him very nervous. Dean’s ‘GRINS’ lately have been more trouble than they’re worth; “Better in Cicero than just a case.”

Sam lets his eyebrows crawl up a little; “And that is?”

“Lisa Braeden,” He looks like a fuckin teenager grinning over banging their prom date.

Sam rolls his eyes, can’t stop himself from grinning because he knows this, knew this wasn’t about a case; “Should I even ask?”

Dean grins and it’s downright lascivious, lowers his voice and leans in foot tapping excitedly under the table, his fingers flex in time with his words and Sam isn’t so sure this is a conversation they should be having in a diner at lunch time. 

“Come on, have a heart? It’s my dying wish!”

“Yeah, well how many dying wishes are you gonna get?”

His expression is serious. Dead serious; “As many as I can squeeze out!”

Sam is pretty sure that shouldn’t have sounded as dirty as it did but then Dean looks at him, palms up wheedling away with that sad ‘when do I ever ask you for anything’ look. 

“Come on, smile, Sam…” He leans in again, quick like a punch to the gut; “God knows I’m gonna be smiling after twenty-four hours with Gumby Girl,” It’s the fact his expression is so sincere, so without humor or innuendo that makes Sam crack.

He chuckles, shakes his head and turns to the menu. The moment is broken though when Dean looks at him with a concerned, perhaps even worried expression on his face and says; “Does that make me Pokey?”

Sam’s appetite flutters away out the window and he cups a palm over his eyes; “Dude… Overshare much?”

“What? It’s NATURE,” He looks serious again, business mode, but his eyes are laughing. 

“Oh, yeah, Nature… Jesus, I think I need to bleach my brain.”

0-0-0

After Cicero things changed. Dean seemed more quiet, he didn’t ask that Sam spend the night in the car while he ‘entertained’ as often. After Cicero ninety-percent of the women Dean flirted with and or took back to the hotel were brunettes. Sam kind of wanted to drive back and leave his brother on Lisa and Ben Braeden’s doorstep thinking his brother was just trying to make up for what he’d missed with her. Sam wasn’t blind, he’d seen the way they looked at one another and no matter what Dean said Sam wasn’t entirely convinced his brother wouldn’t rather be playing house with Lisa and her son. 

The worst nights were when Dean and his Women were particularly noisy. Dean very rarely ever made much noise during sex, aside from the filthy rumbles of encouragement or you know, the normal Good-Sex-Noises, Sam was unfortunate enough to know this for a fact. But one or two of those brunettes pulled a sound or two out… The first time it happened Sam had launched himself out of the car and made it to the door before he realized his brother wasn’t being hurt— not in a manner he hadn’t already agreed to anyway— It… it was weird because once that woman had got that sound out of him she’d laughed, did whatever it was again and again and again. She’d left sooner than Sam had expected her to, stomped in her kitten heels grumbling about macho assholes while she finished zipping up the back of her dress. 

It was weird on a level Sam wasn’t used to and he’d knocked before pushing the door open, found Dean sitting on the edge of his bed with the sheet wrapped around his waist and his head bowed. There were scratches on his back, red raised lines and his shoulders were tense, toes curled into the grungy pile of the carpet. 

Sam had been tempted to make a Viagra joke but something—he wasn’t sure exactly what, had stopped him. Dean hadn’t slept that night, he’d showered for longer than usual, come out with his skin red and raw from too hot water and too much soap, then sat against the headboard with his elbows on his knees just staring at the wall until morning. 

The second time it happened they were in Albuquerque. Dean had had a little too much booze, but the woman had been plying him with mixed drinks and mixed drinks were a dangerous thing when it came to Dean, especially after Elizabethtown. He’d discovered he liked the sweet stuff and tended to have a few too many. At least with beer or straight liquor he knew his limits. 

It had been a brunette with long, thick wavy hair that time and the walls had been too thin. Sam was set up in the passenger seat with his laptop and a notebook and the Sound had happened followed quickly by a feminine, startled voice;

“Fuck—What’s the matter with you… Let me go.”

“Don’t do that.” 

“Fine—Jesus Fuck! God, stupid freak. Let go of me—” She’d stormed out still mostly undressed, shirt unbuttoned breasts barely hidden behind her purse and the wrinkled mass of her bra and panties, shoes clutched by the straps in her other fist.

Sam hadn’t held his tongue that time. Had asked just what the fuck was wrong with Dean, that in all the time he’d been aware of Dean’s sex life he’d never known him to hurt a woman, that he’d seen Dean knock a guy’s nose to the wrong side of his face for roughing up a girl once and now here he was doing it himself?

Dean didn’t make an excuse about the alcohol, just met Sam’s eyes and said; “What? I don’t have the right to stop her if I said ‘no’ and she did it anyway, because she’s a woman?”

“That’s completely different—“

“Fuck no it isn’t… If I say ‘NO’ I mean it, woman or man if I say ‘NO’ it damned well means ‘NO’!”

Sam took a step back and looked at him—actually looked. “You got somethin’ to tell me, Dean?”

For a moment Dean looked very pale, like a deer caught in headlights, then his jaw tightened and his gaze shifted from Sam’s eyes to his forehead, near enough to make him think they were still looking directly at one another, but not quite. 

“You know what I mean, Sammy. ‘No’ means NO. Doesn’t matter how you flip it.”

Sam thought back to that first case after the djinn, Eddy, how he’d seemed to approach the subject warily; ‘Your brother… He’s gay, huh?’

“Dean… uh—W-what was she tryin’ to do?”

The sudden blaze of color that rose to Dean’s cheeks and how he stomped into the bathroom with the sheet still wrapped around his waist—sagging down a little too low in the back— told Sam everything he needed to know.

Dean came out a while later in a t-shirt and his underwear, the sheet balled up. He threw it into the corner and climbed into bed mumbling under his breath, pulled the blankets up high and presented the width of his back to Sam in an attempt to ward off any conversation. 

Sam typed for a while, tried to ignore the damned near physical wall of tension Dean was emitting and made an attempt to… ease his brother’s insecurities.

“Jess— she had this box, OK? Most of it was hers, but there were a few things we—we could use… together,” He swallowed felt like he was making one of those Penthouse Confessions he’d caught Dean reading; “It felt weird, yeah but I mean—“

“Sam?”

“Yeah, Dean?”

“Shut your fuckin face right now or I swear I will END you.” 

“It’s not a bad thing, Dean—“

“I am gonna have night terrors because of this conversation. Do you understand that? I can sleep like a baby after ganking DEMONS, but YOU and your—your BOX are gonna give me night terrors.” 

“Dean—“

“Shut. Up. I mean it. DO NOT say another word.”

Sam shut up, but he watched closer. Wondered if maybe… maybe he hadn’t missed something. It had started after the djinn, maybe… maybe it had something to do with that?

“Dean?”

“Sam,” His tone was warning.

“You never told me.”

“I’m gonna sew your mouth shut—“

“I mean… You never told me everything about the djinn… Mom and Jess were alive… Jess and I were gonna get married… but what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Well, what did you have?”

Dean swallowed audibly and Sam turned his head to look at him, saw Dean’s fingers pulling the blanket a little more tightly over his shoulder.

“I’m not havin’ this conversation with you.”

“Please… Please, Dean,” He didn’t really expect an answer and after a few seconds when he hadn’t got one he exhaled and turned back to his computer.

“Beer,” Dean said it softly, “And pictures.” 

“Pictures?”

“It’s all I needed.”

“You mean like porn?” Why wasn’t he surprised?

Dean made a noise in his throat and it took Sam a minute to realize he was laughing quietly.

“Naw… well, that too… but—“ He exhaled and to Sam his voice sounded sad; “I had pictures and in them I was happy.” 

He looked at the curl of Dean’s back under the blanket, wondered what kind of pictures could spell out paradise for his brother, but wasn’t sure he wanted to know, wasn’t sure he wanted to pry that out when Dean obviously didn’t want to talk about it. 

Later, he told himself, I’ll ask later.

0-0-0

Dean tried to hide it after that but there was always something hollow in his eyes when one of the women he picked up pulled a Sound out of him. Sometimes he didn’t eat the whole day afterward, others he insisted he and Sam leave immediately and he would hunch there behind the wheel with his sunglasses on and his jaw clenched. 

Sam asked him if he was OK, a few times, but didn’t expect a reply. He already knew the answer after all, Dean wasn’t OK. He never would be again. 

Dean, for his part, pushed the thoughts under. Shoved them down and ignored them like he did so much else. A few times Sam stayed back at the hotel for research and Dean went out to get drunk. 

Dean never touched. Never let himself get close, but try as he might to stop himself from looking, his eyes just wouldn’t listen. Picked out faces in the barroom crowd and WATCHED. Sometimes that one would have the same shaped jaw, or this one would have the same build under baggy clothes. Once or twice he saw a guy from behind that had the same untidy hair and set to his shoulders and Dean would just stare, would feel his heart jump in his chest thinking—it’s him. It’s HIM… But then the guy would turn around and he’d look nothing like Him. His nose would be too wide, his lips were too thin and his eyes were the wrong color. 

The eyes were always the wrong color. Dean was starting to think there wasn’t a right color, that his mind had just made it up because of the djinn’s poison like that time when he was younger and he’d got hold of some homemade ribbon candy laced with LSD from a couple of hippies in Washington State whose house he’d rid of a poltergeist and for days had been convinced he could taste sound and color. 

His dreams were filled with those blue eyes though, messy dark hair and the press of another body into his own. He ACHED inside for it, but just… just couldn’t conceive of actually going up to one of those men he singled out in the bars and DO it. They’re not HIM and if it’s not Him then he just—CAN’T. He feels sick to his stomach just LOOKING because none of those men are Cas and he only wants CAS, but Cas isn’t real… Yet he can’t keep himself from stupidly looking for him. 

In the morning, after the woman he’s picked up is gone and he’s back behind the wheel of his car, Sam to his right, Dean has to tell himself all over again that Cas wasn’t real, he never was, NONE OF IT was real and he’s pathetic for holding on, for hoping.

So, he picks up any woman that so much as smiles at him. Tries to ground himself in the Here and Now, tries to burn out those memories with one more drink, one more woman. Once or twice even huddles in tight groups and breathes in bitter white smoke shared from hand rolled blunts just trying to forget because he’s not sure what’s worse. The knowledge that he’s going to Hell, or the fact that Cas was just a figment of his imagination and Supernatural Acid. He throws back another shot and forces it down a little further, watches Sam’s search for a loophole become frantic and can’t really make himself care.

He drinks, eats, laughs, hunts things and saves people. He looks at Sam, alive and well and getting better every day, tells himself it’s worth it, that Sam is worth it. And for a while at least he knows that’s true.

And then that SONG will come on the radio for no reason, that stupid fucking SONG and he’s back to square one.

The conversation he has with himself while under the influence of the dream root though changes things. Part of him had known, deep down, but he’d refused to think about it, refused to acknowledge it or dredge those dark horrific thoughts up and examine them. 

That’s what his future held. No respite, no forgiveness, no redemption… Just Hell. Sooner or later, inevitably, he’d become one of the things he hates most. He’ll climb out of the pit and hurt people just like he’s been trying to stop his whole life. He’ll be black eyed, he’ll force himself down some poor innocent bastard’s throat and laugh while the soul stuck in there with him weeps for release. 

He may even meet Sam again, imagine that. May smile and play at his brother’s sympathies… hurt his brother… Kill him—

He wakes up scared… Terrified. 

I don’t deserve to go to hell. What did I do? I wanted to protect him and now I’m going to leave him here alone. I’m going to die alone… And I’ll become one of those things—

At the last Dean tells himself that Sam will be fine without him. That it doesn’t matter. Sam’s tough, he’ll be fine. Dean tells himself that Hell isn’t going to be that bad. He’s lived through bad, lived through hurts and fear. It can’t be that bad. He’ll make it. He won’t become THAT. He—he won’t. He’s strong enough to resist. Hell won’t break him.

He’s wrong. 

He’s very—very wrong. 

He doesn’t die immediately when the hellhounds rip into him. Sink their horrific burning faces into him and just—just chew. They don’t eat, don’t tear out his organs and fight over them like wolves. They chew simply for the joy of chewing and then spit it out. 

He chokes on his own blood, feels it frothing in the back of his throat where one of them had gnawed his lungs—can feel it bubbling out of the wounds. For a little while he can smell himself, smell the spilled contents of his stomach and bowels the acidic burn of bile on soft tissues. He believes that it’s over then, that it can’t be worse. This is Death, the end—the absolute. 

He was wrong.

He’s still vaguely conscious when Sam levers him off the floor, even if he’s stopped breathing, feels himself caught between Hellhounds’ teeth like a dirty towel between Dobermans. He’s torn free somewhere between his head leaving the rug and Sam pulling him close. He catches a glimpse of himself lying limp and cooling, nothing but meat and torn clothes in Sam’s arms—Holy shit, I’m dead— and the next instant he’s being dragged—falling from an impossible height down through blackness toward a glowing abyss. 

Each chain is interconnected, spliced on bloody rings with skulls pushed onto it like macabre beads. The hook in his side stretches out for miles and into someone else, each one leads out into the blackness and connects to another soul. Every time one of the other souls move, breathe or cry out, it pulls a little deeper. He can feel the vibration of motion and voice through them, like spider webbing pulled absolutely taut. He feels like a fly and every so often he can see spiders crawling closer. 

He’d believed Lilith’s face was awful, thought Ruby’s was bad… These things are worse. Twisted, deformed, scarred and bloody. They smile out of their smooth mouths almost patiently. Like they know, like they’re telling him; “Just wait your turn, we’ll be there soon enough.” 

He doesn’t struggle at first, afraid of causing the people he’s distantly chained to more pain. They thrash and scream and he feels it, there’s no stopping it. He’ll beg them to please, just stop moving, but they never listen. They look at him over the miles and… and SMILE. 

It feels good to fight back, even if it hurts worse, but the screams he pulls from those around him as they finally feel what it’s like to be yanked around by someone else’s selfishness feels almost vindicating. It doesn’t last long, the guilt is crushing so he just hangs there and screams for help, maybe if he screams loud enough Sam will hear him. 

Sam’s going to get him out of here. He’ll find a way. They got Dad out, Sam can get him out too! Easy. He just has to wait. 

He goes mad for a time. The pain and thirst and fever in his veins. Everything is sharp and vague in the same instant, there is no respite from the pain. It doesn’t even reach that point he’s used to where he can shut it away, it exceeds that point and shatters the walls he tries to build around it, compartmentalize it. It strips back everything and leaves him exposed, like a raw nerve. He tries to find comfort in his memories. Winds up singing softly to himself in an attempt to find some kind of solace. He remembers his mother’s voice and her hands, how she’d sing ‘Hey, Jude’ when he couldn’t sleep.

He remembers the world in his head the Djinn had created, tries to worm his way back in to escape. Everything hurts but the memories bubble up. 

Sam and Jess, Mom… Cas. 

He hallucinates, he knows he does. Feels cool hands pushing back his hair, a prickly chin and soft dry lips. He imagines being sick, maybe the flu, something mundane and stupid and Cas taking care of him. Curling up under the blankets with him and just holding him while he shivered. 

Sometimes it’s his mother, sometimes it’s Sam… But they both turn into Cas for some reason. 

And then the Spiders come for him. He hadn’t even noticed them until they were so close, crawling forward Smiling. Dean struggles, doesn’t want them near him. Doesn’t want their claws anywhere near him. He’s seen what they do, he KNOWS and he doesn’t want them anywhere near him.

He screams and threatens and fights, pulls at the chains and doesn’t care who he’s hurting, but they creep closer the same, bite and CHEW and rip… 

There is nothing he can do to stop it. 

They smile with their crooked red teeth and continue to chew. 

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	2. Bruised Knuckles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was trying to wait until tomorrow to post this, but you guys are so awesome you convinced me to do it early. 
> 
> *bless you*
> 
> (any mistakes are my own, just warning)

0-0-0

Terror is a bad translation. A thin, transparent, meaningless noise… There isn’t a word in any language to describe what it was like. There just… there just aren’t words.

The smells though, were very easily described. Compound and intricate like perfume. Rot, sulfuric-acid, urine, feces, blood, ash and seared flesh. Eau de’ Inferno. Classy. Buy some for your wife, she’ll love it.

There are singular sensations, like the song. Snapshots in blood and agony. Polaroid images burned on flesh and bone. Skin pulled back at artistic points, pinned—STRETCHED—each layer carefully and lovingly peeled up. Epidermis; _Stratum germinativum, Stratum basale, Stratum spinosum, stratum granulosum, stratum lucidum, stratum corneum._ Dermis; _Papillary, reticular_. Hypodermis; _Fascia, Superficial fascia, areolar, adipose_. Skin ligaments and nerve fibers pulled free and exposed, like threads separated from the weave. Muscles carefully carved back like expensive cuts of meat; Pectoralis major, pectoris minor, Serratis anterior, internal intercostal, linea alba, external abdominal oblique, rectis abdominis, transverse abdominis, internal abdominal oblique. The yellow-bloody stack of ribs—still heaving for breath, sternum, floating ribs, clavicle, the silverwhite fans of connective tissue… The iliac crest is split, ratcheted back on itself like butterfly wings. The abdominal wall flayed, quivering… Bladder drooping out of the incision into air like a withered tomato, it twitches every so often but has been empty for hours, his jeans are wetand dirty where they’re bunched around his knees, it’s all caked in blood and filth on his thighs. Large intestine, strung about his neck like a boa, small intestine stretched out in sweeping arcs and waves like Lincoln Draperies. The diaphragm is in spasm from the trauma— _hiccups_ —the sound is interesting, whimpers of pain sliced off by something so simple and innocent sounding;

“Please—please sto— _hic_ —stop. Pl— _hic_ —please stop.”

The liver has been cutBURNED away, cauterized, pancreas as well. The kidneys are hanging freely, bowed inward like wilted tulips, pulsing with what little blood is left, they twitch, everything is in constant jerking movement.

Acid reflux because the stomach has nothing to support its weight, its slowly sliding free, pullingTEARING at the esophagus—retching now, bloody bile down his chin, splattering into open wounds.

“P— _hic_ —please… Please.”

It’s beautiful.

A burning arctic hand pushing in-inininininin, stroking against the quivering sacs of lung tissue almost gentle until the claws curl—POP-HISSSSSS— no more breath, the butterfly flutter of the heart. Quick like a drumbeat boomboomboomboomboomboom. It’s firm when filled with blood, less so as it is pushed out, feels magical—PURE to touch it— It’s magnificent.

“This has been fun, we’ll have to try it again sometime.”

Teeth gnawing in the dark. Screaming and twisted electric brightness like claws. Scratching-cuttingrippinghurting.

Attack. BURNING abominations descending from above with talons extended.

Tied down—unable to move. Hooks tearing from flesh.

Blinding white and everything stops—Shudders—FREEZES.

He inhales smoke and ash and the putrid stench of his own waste, flesh melted from his bones and there are hands re—

Silence.

Something in his chest pops and crackles. Collapsed lungs suddenly inflate, his heart shudders—skips and beats to quickly. He’s used to it, doesn’t realize what it is until he’s choking, coughing.

There is no pain… Just something muted and dull in his head and joints. He feels like he’s forgotten something.

Why is it so dark? Even when they’d blinded him it hadn’t been dark.

For a moment he flails, bangs his limbs and head and face against the confines of his prison.

He can _move._

His lighter’s in his pocket—He doesn’t know where that knowledge comes from, but when he slides his fingers in there, there it is. His thumb stings against the wheel— it doesn’t want to light on the first strike.

Where is he?

The lighter flickers into life and his eyes water in the sudden brightness, pupils reacting with a feeling like knives slipping into his skull—The resistance of firm tissue beneath the blade giving suddenly into a smooth liquid slide. Clear fluid, very little blood until the knife meets the back of the eye socket or the lids squeeze together in agony and rip themselves on the sharp edges of the razor. Then it’s all red and the resistance of flesh as he cuts, saws the knife in and out against helpless, quivering—

“HELP!”

Like barbed wire pushed strand by strand down his throat— nudged and twisted until it tears through the lining of his esophagus and into tender internal organs already cut and torn into chum—

He doesn’t scream. Can’t. His throat closes, breath catches, hyper-inflates his lungs like balloons ready to pop—The quick plunge of a blade and the foamy red sigh of air escaping into his chest cavity.

But there’s only silence.

Close, crushing SILENCE.

_“HELP!”_ There is sound this time, not a rasp but a tearing bloody screech. He can’t make a noise any louder, tears in his eyes, everything blurs and he—he just wants it to end, please, let it end; “Help!”

Everything hurts, breathing, blinking, thinking, moving, he wants to stop but he can’t. If he stops, they win.  

He’s in a box. Slats of wood in the flickering light above him.

He presses up and specks—grit, tumbles between them into his face, gets in his eyes—BURNS and he can’t see, blinks until the tears wash it away and there is mud on his lashes. He can feel the splintery wood above him. It stabs into the pads of his fingers, pinpricks—little smears of blood. It’s wet, gives under his nails as he scratches. Rotting—Everything smells here. He can’t take the **smell** anymore.

_**Crack**_ —Earth collapses on his face, chunks of wet dark soil in his mouth and nose and ears and eyes. Chokes him—No breath— There are WORMS, they crawl and wriggle against his face and ears and nose—He screams and thrashes, chokes and claws his way upward mindlessly.

He twists, fights, tears at it as it keeps coming. The wood breaks apart as he punches at it—rips his nails scratching to get free. A nail gouges deep into his arm, a rock collides with his nose and he can’t BREATHE!

Some of the worst torture he endured was this. Suffocation. A lot can run through your mind in those six minutes it takes to die from lack of air. A lot of panic, a lot of rage and fear and pain, you can’t help but fight. Mindless, animal, base urges. There’s nothing human about the need to breathe, nothing human in the way you’ll fight for your next gulp of air.

It has to be miles—He’s locked away in the center of the earth. He could claw and tear forever and never get—

His fingers find emptinesswarmth.

_AIR!_

The sun blinds him, air chokes him and his limbs shake as he struggles sightlessly through the hole he’s made. Like a worm—like a creature birthing itself from the abyss—

It hurts— Oh GOD it _hurts—_

He just wants to rest—hold still and not move but the thought of the ground swallowing him up again, suffocating him slowly is real and pulsing behind his eyes, so he fights.  

Then he’s out. Lying on his face in prickly dry grass, dazed and barely conscious. The sun is blazing hot against his back and everything is quiet—still. It’s possible he loses consciousness for a moment, the world swims dizzily around him and the edges of his vision grow dark. He breathes, pulls in air that doesn’t smell of burnt flesh and filth and chemicals, shivers in the warmth against skin that has been chilled for so long, waits for the laughter and cruel hands to return…

But they don’t.

He rolls onto his back and blinks up at the sun like it’s a foreign entity. It’s bright and hurts his eyes. it takes him a few seconds to remember not to look at it and by that time there are green blobs dancing behind his eyelids. His arms ache and tremble, his fingers feel stiff and sore, they twitch against his chest as if they don’t know they’re not digging anymore. His legs feel numb and he considers the fact that they may be broken from his thrashing, may be useless and he could lie here and burn in the sun slowly.

His mouth is dry and his stomach hurts—is empty. He feels empty all over.

After a moment he pushes himself up but his legs won’t move immediately. He winds up on the ground again on his side staring at wilting purple flowers amid the brittle dry grass. The second time he makes it up, staggers and blinks blindly around him breathing quickly.

The trees on all sides of him are void of their bark, leaves naught but ash, limbs charred stumps, roots up, blasted down and outward as if a bomb had gone off. Leveled like one of those nature programs he vaguely remembers about the rain forest.

There was eerie stillness. No birds, no bees or squirrels… Everything was quiet. Not even a cloud in the sky.

Dean didn’t know where he was. Didn’t know what had happened. His first thought is Sam. Where was Sam?

He turned in a complete circle, taking in his surroundings, stared down at the hole he’d dragged himself through and fought back bile. It was a grave. He—he’d just pulled himself out of his own GRAVE.  

He flattens one hand to his chest, feels a steady—albeit quick—thumpthump thumpthump.

He’s alive. This… this isn’t a trick, he’s alive.

Dean takes another breath looks left and right, choses neither and starts walking straight ahead. The road wasn’t too far from the… his grave—Jesus, his grave—weeds encroaching on the crackled antique blacktop. He stood there swaying for a moment, taking in his options. He had two choices, it’s possible more than one of them was wrong.

The heat gave the illusion of water across the road at a few points and after a few miles he pulls off his over shirt, ties it around his waist and breathes out nice and slow. His mouth is dry and those shimmering mirror like illusions of water are not easy to deal with. Twice he sees them, feels relief, but when he gets there there’s nothing but dust. He’s so thirsty he bites the inside of his lip a few times just to draw out some moisture. He half expected the earth to crack open beneath his feet and swallow him because that’s what he’s used to, but it doesn’t.

The miles peeled away step by step under his feet. Sweat built at the small of his back, down the center of his chest and under his arms. He felt sticky, dirty—DIRTY, inside and out and his stomach ACHES.

The sun climbed higher into the sky, a blazing brand bearing down on him, intent on burning him to a red, dry husk, then blasting him away to nothing. It would be painful, but he’d been through it before. Shit, he’ll never be able to watch ‘Temple of Doom’ again without puking.

No motion, no life…  Even the gas station he finds looks abandoned. Dusty grime covered windows, cracked peeling paint. The sign in the window says ‘CLOSED’ and the cars parked in the lot are chalky on the outside from rain and disuse. Where is everybody?

Who is he kidding, the whole world could be dead.

He rattled the doorknob, knocks, calls out in a dry rasp and looks for any sign of life in the vicinity.

There’s nothing. He can see food through the window. Can see bottles in a cooler along the back wall. It’s right there, it’s RIGHT THERE. His hands shake and his fingers feel swollen and stupid as he fumbles with the knot of his shirtsleeves, finally gets it untied and balls the shirt around his fist, breathes out and knocks one of the glass panels to shards.

He’s thirsty dammit and there’s water RIGHT THERE.

The glass crunches under his feet and the room feels like an oven around him but that bottle—Jesus—it’s like ice in his hand, he gulps down three mouthfuls and welcomes the dizzy cold HURT of it as the abrupt temperature change constricts and releases the blood vessels in his soft pallet and sinuses. It makes him want to puke a little, but he tilts the bottle up again and takes a few more swallows. The newspapers are stacked nearby and he snuffles over to take a look, figure out where he is.

Pontiac Illinois… The date is wrong on all the newspapers. September, yeah, he can understand it being September, but the year? What the hell, no way.

Four months fifteen days…

He’s been dead four months and fifteen days.

That’s. It.

He takes a slow, steadying breath and puts the paper back, turns away and feels the room spin. It felt almost like he was going to pass out. Just drop over and lay there all limp and helpless and alone. He shuffled over to the sink outside the little ‘Employees Only’ wash room and bends his head under the tap, washes the grime from his face and watches the dirty water swirl around the redblack ring of the drain and out of sight. It cleared his head a little, lowered his temperature enough that the world comes into sharper focus. He raises up slowly, takes long slow breathes and pats his face dry on his shirt, flinches when he finds someone looking at him out of wide red-rimmed eyes when he raises up.

Who is that guy?

Why does he move when Dean mo—Jesus. He feels like an idiot, leans closer and blinks at himself, rocks back on his heels and lifts his shirt. It’s different looking down at himself than it is to see it in the mirror. His eyes can lie to him, a mirror doesn’t.

He expects there to be raised keloids across his abdomen and chest. Expects there to be a spiderweb of scar tissue from stabbings, lacerations, claw marks, bites and even burns, expects to be emaciated, worn thin and skeletal, TWISTED… but when he looks there’s nothing. Not even the scars he’s supposed to have. No knife wound, no bumpy lines from stitches. No strange dent on his left side where he’d had broken ribs and they hadn’t healed quite right. His elbow didn’t click when he straightened his arms, his shoulder didn’t ache and his knees didn’t groan as he moved. There is smooth skin fitted perfectly over muscles and bones and organs.

He runs his hands over his hips, his thighs, wiggles his toes in his boots—his hand trembles when he touches the front of his jeans and finds himself whole, sucks in a quick shuddering breath and lets it out. His hands move on without lingering, trace up his sides and across his back—that’s when it happens, when the fabric of his shirt catches against his upper left arm—pulled at tender hot flesh.

It felt like he’d been burned… Like his shirt was made of burlap. He wondered what kind of pattern the scars made across his back and shoulders. Fingernails digging in and peeling up ribbons of flesh.

The handprint is not at all what he was expecting. Looking at it makes something in his gut tighten up like he may have to use the bathroom any second and there’s a weird pressure in his head. A strange sense that he’s seen this before, like memories bubbling below the surface, seething as infection in an open wound, ready to burst forth and leave stains on his clothes.

He turns away from the mirror and takes in his surroundings, pushes the thoughts away, eases his way around the shop as if he has every right to be there. He grabs up a candy bar on his way, tears it open and chomps in, fills a plastic bag with chocolate, bottled water and simply because he can snatches up the latest issue of ‘Asian Beauties. I mean, why not, not like he’s actually paying for it.

It happens as he’s deciding to leave, slips behind the counter again and pokes a few buttons on the register, grinning when it ‘DING!’s Itself open. Cash in his pockets, awesome.

The TV at his elbow turns on, static behind which there’s a tinny whine similar to high powered electricity.

He stares at it, looks around to make sure nobody’s caught him and turns it off.

The radio flips on.

So does the television.

The whine grows louder.

Dean’s heart climbs into his throat and sweat rolls down his back, phantom screams in his head, the memory of a slick hot pressure on his skin as the knife cuts through—

They’ve found him.

Something, some high power Demon or another yanked him out and now they’ve found him again, ready to drag his sorry ass back to the pit. Oh, aren’t they going to love him… Pay him back for the three hours of life he’s stolen, the three hours free of torture.

His bag of things hits the ground between his feet and he trips over them as he scurries around the counter, careens down aisle two and snatches up canisters of salt, tears into them with his fingernails and teeth and shaking hands, dumps them along the windowsill, but the whine grows, the rattle grows and Dean backs up—hands over his ears, screaming in defiance of the sound.

It grows and grows and the pressure increases in Dean’s head until he can’t see, everything whites out and the only way he knows he’s making noise is he can feel it tearing out of his throat as that SOUND vibrates his internal organs, shakes the water and chocolate in his stomach until it’s creeping back up his throat and he’s on his side in the floor, curled like an aborted fetus and too scared to scream.

The glass breaks, pushed inward on the very sound waves assaulting him. The shards hit the floor, imbed themselves in his hands and hair and he tries to protect his face. At this point he’d go willingly as long as that sound STOPPED.

And then it was gone, nothing but a low rumble quickly receding.

Dean didn’t move at first, lie there still keening, ears ringing too loudly to hear the inhuman noises he was making. Unsure that the… whatever it was, Demon or fuck only knew, was gone. He lifted his head slowly, expecting that white-eyed figure to be standing over him, but there was only the ruin of the store around him. No smoke, no darkness, no grabbingtearingcutting hands and chewing mouths.

He lunges to his feet, slips and slides in the broken glass as it crunches beneath his boots, grabs up his bag and fills another with salt canisters. Wishes there were more, then leaves the building, staring left and right, up and out in search of whatever THING had nearly shook him to death.

The phone in the building is dead, but the booth near the road looks untouched, so he chances a quick dash out to it, feeds it a few quarters and punches in Sam’s number.

Disconnected… All of them.

Bullshit…

Another quarter.  He only has two left.

It rings only once and the voice that answers is unconcerned, bored.

“Yeah?”

Dean’s heart shakes in his chest and he inhales deeply; “Bobby?”

“Yeah?” He sounds almost annoyed now.

“It’s me,” Heat is rising off the land around him and he feels like he’s being watched, chases phantom shaped mirages with his eyes. He wants to turn and scream at the landscape in challenge of what may be lurking out there but holds his tongue for the moment.

“Who’s ‘Me’?”

He scoffs; “Dean!”

The line disconnects.

He holds the phone out, stares at it, plops in one of his last quarters and dials again.

It doesn’t even complete a full ring before Bobby’s voice is back, low—dangerous, he sounds pissed; “Who is this.”

“Bobby, listen to me—“

“This ain’t funny—Call again and I’ll kill ya—“

The line goes dead.

Dean doesn’t waste his last quarter. He’s heard that tone in Bobby’s voice before, the old man means business and Dean isn’t going to waste his time—not now. He’ll just…

He inhales deeply and lets it out, considers his options and steals one of the cars parked in the lot. Hotwires it, fills it with gas and just drives. Lets his hands shake on the steering wheel.  His ears are still roaring and he finds himself making a hollow high noise in the back of his throat to compensate for it, trying to find that exact pitch and frequency because maybe then it’ll jog whatever memory is hiding away beneath that pustule in his head and he’ll remember where he’s heard it before, he’ll remember where that handprint came from and figure out a way to kill the thing that did it.

He doesn’t turn on the radio, it doesn’t even occur to him. The silence is both horrifying and grounding even if his ears are still ringing.

It takes longer than he’d expected to get to Sioux Falls. It’s almost dinner time and Dean’s too anxious to stop to use the bathroom. He doesn’t even realize he has to pee until he’s had his hand clamped down on it for a while. Sam would throw a fit if he saw him doing this, but he tosses repurposed water bottles out the window into yellowing corn fields as he passes them and keeps driving.

Bobby’s yard is overgrown, even more so than Dean remembers it. He pounds on the door and steps back to breathe and let his limbs shake while he waits for an answer.

Bobby’s thinner. Looks like he hasn’t slept. There’s an oil splatter on his t-shirt and he staggers back a full two steps when the door opens, face slack eyes wide.

Dean swallows past a dry patch in his throat and forces on a smile he doesn’t feel; “Surprise.”

Bobby takes a third step backward and his eyes become sharp, “I don’t—”

Dean nods, can understand the shock of it, still feels shaky from it himself, “Yeah, me neither—“ And crosses the threshold. “But, here I am.”

Bobby’s mouth is still open, his breath is short and quick, his gaze somehow pained—The next instant he takes a close hard jab at Dean’s neck with a silver dagger.

Dean drops back, lets his knee relax and ducks under the blade, grabs Bobby’s wrist but doesn’t get out of the way fast enough for the rabbit punch to the face—

“BOBBY!” He staggers, almost falls and cups a hand to his mouth and nose, expecting there to be blood—expecting the sharp hard POP of that knife into his belly; “Bobby, it’s ME!”

“My ass!” And he advances with the knife again.

Dean grabs the nearest thing to him, eyes locked on the man before him, and puts the desk chair between himself and the older hunter; “Woah-woah—WAIT! I’ll prove it! Your name is Robert Steven Singer. You became a Hunter after you wife got possessed—You’re about the closest thing I have to a father.”

The look on his face is shocked, but somehow unsympathetic, the knife is still held in an easy, ready grip. The blade looks hungry—

“Bobby—“ He swallows; “It’s ME…”

The knife slowly lowers and Dean releases the chair as Bobby pushes it aside, steps close and lifts his empty hand, touches with nervous fingers—And lunges with the knife again.

He isn’t sure why he expected it to be that easy, but this time he dodges the punch and pins the older man’s powerful arms; “I’m not a shape shifter!”

“Then you’re a revenant!”

It's not easy, but he gets the knife away and shoves the other man toward the den, brandishes it and bares his teeth threateningly; “Alright, if I was either, could I do this, with a silver knife?” He pulls his sleeve up, keeping his eyes on Bobby’s—A sick twist in his chest makes him hesitate, stare at the unmarred flesh of his inner arm—he knows this feeling, knows the way the blade SINGS as it finds blood—he swallows bile and presses it in. Lets the blood drip and watches Bobby’s expression closely.

It flickers across Bobby’s face, recognition, fear, shame… joy; “Dean?”

He exhales, hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath and nods; "That’s what I’ve been tryin’ to tell ya!”

Bobby still takes half a step back, his breath hitches like he’s going to start crying and when he comes forward again he crushes Dean between his arms, digs in with his fingers, SQUEEZES and Dean doesn’t flinch because that dull twinge of being held too tightly feels wonderful. He grips back and lets his heart slow.

Bobby steps backward again a moment later, stares at him, breathes in and out—“It’s good to see ya, Boy.”

“Yeah,” He tangles his fingers in Bobby’s shirt again, grounds himself with the rough feel of flannel, the smell of motor oil, diesel and sweat. “You too.”

He shakes his head in disbelief and wrinkles his nose at the dried dirt on Dean's clothes; “But—How did you bust out?”

He shakes his head, swallows past that dry patch again; “I don’t know—“ He turns and sets the knife down on the desk; “I just woke up in a pine box—“

When he turns to Bobby again he gets a face full of water, chokes and swallows a little, spits the rest toward the window and blinks at the older man in disbelief. “I’m not a demon either, you know.”

“Sorry,” Bobby looks half ashamed of himself, half relieved and holds out the bottle. “Can’t be too careful.”

Dean takes a deep breath and turns, snags a towel off the counter top and rubs his face and neck dry.

“But, you just… just _woke up?”_

“Like Sleeping Beauty... only without the kiss thing,” He winced and prodded his shoulder, _I hope._

Bobby turns and goes toward the library; “That don’t make a lick of sense.”

“Yeah, you’re preachin’ to the choir.”

“Dean,” Bobby presses his fingertips into the desk; “Your chest was ribbons… your insides were slop and you been buried _four months!”_ The expression on his face was part cringe, part disbelief. “Even if you could slip outta hell and back into your meatsuit—“

“I know, I should look like a Thriller video reject,” Bones and rotted flesh, bloated with maggots where his eyeballs should have been.

“What do you remember?”

He tries to swallow but can’t quite remember how, has to try a second and third time before he can manage it; “Not much… I remember I was a hellhound’s chew toy… and then lights out,” He meets Bobby’s eyes, puts on his ‘sincere’ face and gestures like it’s no big deal; “Then I come to six feet under, that was it.”

Bobby breathes in and eases down into his chair, palms rubbing together while he thinks, tries to find an explanation.

Dean twists the towel in his hands, like he's trying to choke it or make a knot tight enough to use as a blunt weapon; “Sam’s number’s not working… He’s –uh—he’s not—“

“Aw, well, he’s alive,” Bobby’s eyes are wide and he looks around as if the subject grates on his nerves. “as far as I know.”

Dean thinks his knees may give out, focuses on his heart beating and keeping it even and slow, not the prickle in his sinuses; “Good,” He walks around the desk, “Wait, what do you mean ‘as far as you know’?”

Bobby hesitates for a moment, then looks away sheepishly; “I haven’t talked to him for months.”

“You’re kidding. You just let him go off by himself?”

“He was dead set on it,” Dean knows that tone. Sam can be stubborn when he wants to be, he learned that a long time ago.

“Bobby, you shoulda been lookin’ after him.”

“I tried!” There’s a vein on his forehead, it’s squirming around like it’s alive; “These last months haven’t been exactly easy you know.  For him or me… We had to BURY you.”

“Why did you bury me anyway?”

“I wanted you salted and burned. The usual drill, but Sam wouldn’t have it.”

Dean nodded and touched his tongue to his lower lip, “Well, I’m glad he won that one.”

Bobby was less than amused; “He said you’d need a body when he got you back home somehow… That’s about all he said.”

Something cold and heavy settled into his stomach; “What do you mean?” 

Bobby leaned his hip against his desk; “He was quiet—Real quiet… then—“ He made a gesture like the roadrunner speeding off into the sunset; “—he just took off. Wouldn’t return my calls, I tried to find him, but he don’t wanna be found.”

It made sense in that moment. Everything. Dean ground his teeth, felt a burning spike ramming into his head; “Dammit, Sammy…”

“What?” Bobby’s brow wrinkled.

“Oh, he got me home, OK, but whatever he did, it was bad mojo.”

“What makes you so sure?” Bobby looked up at him, slipping seamlessly into business mode.

“You should have seen the grave site…”

Bobby’s expression was rapt, like a kid listening to a horror story.

“I was like a nuke went off! Then there was this… this force— this presence, I don’t know, but it—it blew past me in a fill up joint,” His insides shook, like he’d been submerged in ice water too long. He shrugged out of his over shirt; “And then this.”

Bobby’s eyes follow his every move and the second his shirt sleeve is up and that… that handprint is exposed the older man is on his feet. He looks a little scared but crowds in close to look at it. “What in the hell!” His fingers lift to touch, hover close then curl back as if he were afraid of contamitaion. 

“It was like a demon… yanked me out… or rode me out.”

“But why?”

“Hold up their end of the bargain,” He pulls his sleeve back down, can’t stand looking at it.

“You think Sam made a deal,” Bobby’s voice was urgent, half panicked, but he controlled it well, swallowed it down because this was no time for panicking and rash decisions.

Dean nodded, “It’s what I would have done,” _It’s basically what I DID._

Bobby steps back again, nods and scratches at his head, “We need to find him.”

“He still got the same phone?”

“As far as I know, why?”

It was easier than Dean thought it would be, a simple phone call and an internet connection.

“Hey, Bobby?” He picked up one of the bottles littered around the computer; “What’s the deal with the liquor store? Hmm? Your parents outta town or somethin’?”

Bobby couldn’t quite meet his eyes at first; “Like I said… Last few months ain’t been all that easy.”

Dean didn’t think it was an excuse, but he did understand… Maybe not WHY it hadn’t been easy, but he knew the serenity found in the bottom of a bottle quite well. “Right.”

It took the GPS locater a few minutes to work, but when it did that cold weight in Dean’s stomach grew heavier; “Sam’s in Pontiac Illinois.”

“Right near where you were planted—“

For some reason he thinks of plants, the cornfields he chucked bottles of piss into; “Right where I popped up… Hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

Bobby rocked onto his heels and went for the kitchen, picked up a phone and started making calls. Dean sat there for a while, just staring at the computer screen. How could he have done it? Hadn’t he learned that making deals with demons didn’t solve anything? It didn’t make anything better… Jesus Christ.

Dean didn’t know anything had happened until Bobby was staring at him through the doorway and Dean’s fist was throbbing. There was a series of bloody smears on the desk shaped like his knuckles and some papers had scattered in the floor. He didn’t apologize, didn’t pick them up, just stormed upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom for a while. Sat with his back against the door and his head between his knees just trying to breathe, pressing into the cut on his arm just to feel the sting, ignoring how his vision blurred and moisture dripped off his chin. He showered in water so hot it left his skin red and tender, scrubbed until there were scratches on his inner thighs and hips, but that weird, oily feeling of his skin didn’t abate so he did it again with cold water, climbed out numb with blue tinged lips.

He didn’t sleep. Couldn’t. Bobby didn’t either, of course Dean wasn’t exactly surprised. Every so often the older hunter crept down the stairs and just looked at him from the other room. Like he couldn’t quite believe Dean was actually there. Dean curled into himself a little tighter and focused on keeping his breathing slow and even, feigning sleep.

Eventually Bobby would creep back up the stairs and the house would fall into silence once more.

Dean lined his fingers up with the mark on his shoulder and squeezed, poked and prodded at that weird… weird HOLLOW in his head where it felt like something was missing, but it didn’t retreat and show him what was hidden beneath no matter how he raged against it.

New clothes felt scratchy against his skin but he wore them anyway, stared at himself in the mirror for a long while and contemplated a nick on his chin from the razor. How the blood slid free so easily, so smoothly over wet skin. Little crimson dewdrops against the prickles he had yet to scrape away. Bobby pounded a fist on the door, said; “Don’t you think you’ve primped enough there, Princess?”

"Jesus, Bobby. You'll make me slit my throat!"

A pinch and quick left to right... If it was a razorblade it wouldn't hurt at first, just feel tingly and wet. It wouldn't hurt until you'd already lost enough blood that clapping your hands to the wound wouldn't change anything. Just force it down into your lungs and give you the added pleasure of drowning while you bled out. 

BANGBANGBANG on the door.

His pupils were wide and for an instant all he could see was the blackness of them, the razor hit the sink and bounced off into the floor and Dean sucked in a startled breath, felt his heart jerk into frantic motion in his chest and scrubbed his shaking palm over the line of red from his chin that had dripped nearly to the collar of his shirt. 

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	3. Rain on Your Parade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The way I figure, Castiel is the Angel of Thursday, so, if I put this here now that means the next chapter comes on Thursday too... What a coincidence. ;)**
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> PS... I have upwards of fifteen other fics on my hard drive. All of them are slash, if I post the first chapters/what I have and a summary of what it's about, would you give me some honest feedback as to what you think of them? (Which ones I should continue, which ones I should discard.)

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The GPS put Sam’s location within a hundred meters of a hotel in Pontiac… The Astoria. It was a five story brick building with a vintage neon sign outside. Bobby looked on edge, almost nervous, he kept his hands curled into loose fists at his sides and ducked into the lobby when Dean held the door open with a low rumble of annoyance. 

The front lobby was something out of a seventies cop drama. Green wallpaper that looked oddly like palm fronds with wainscot that looked to have at one time been white, but age, neglect and cigarette smoke had turned it a weird greengold where the paint wasn't chipping. The rugs were frayed and had stains where foot traffic was heaviest and the front desk was chipped faux marble veneer. Someone had scratched something vaguely penis shaped beside the ledger and the man behind the desk had probably the most tragic comb-over Dean had seen outside of sleazy backroom poker matches. He gave Dean a once over, coughed a smoker's cough and focused back on the computer screen in front of him. The sound was low, but not low enough to disguise the sounds of 'Barely Legal Lesbian Love Fest'... Volume Two from the sound of it. Pirated copy, you could hear panting in the background. 

Dean glanced over the ledger, pretending to look in his pockets for his key. It was nice really, having a new body. He could see a lot better now than he could before. He just hoped he stuck around long enough to use it. All in all, it was slightly higher class than the dumps Dean remembered staying in, but not by much.

The stairs were their only option, no elevator, but Bobby kept up, wasn't even winded when they reached the correct floor, just rolled his eyes and pushed past Dean down the hall. Some brunette answered the door in her underwear. Saw Dean’s face and blinked in surprise. 

She drummed her fingers on the door head lowering when they said nothing; “So… where is it?” Her nose wrinkled like she smelled something bad.

Dean couldn’t stop staring at her face, he didn’t know why, but he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d seen her before. Bobby’s eyes were on her panties and he looked just a tad guilty when Dean turned to him.

“Where’s what?” Dean almost wanted to laugh at the exasperated look on her face. Like he'd ruined her birthday party or something.

“The pizza? That takes two guys to deliver?”

“I—Think we got the wrong room…”He tried to smile apologetically but it came off as a wince. Maybe his eyes weren't as good as he'd given them credit.

And then someone moved deeper in the suite. 

“Hey, is—“ Sam’s face went from relaxed to blank to terrified in less than two seconds. He looked at Dean, then to Bobby in confusion, then back to Dean. 

He looked good. Same as ever. His hair was a little longer and it looked like he’d bulked up, Dean didn’t remember Sam’s arms being exactly that thick last time he’d seen him. “Heyya, Sammy.”

For half a second Dean was sure Sam was going to hyperventilate and pass out like a fucking starlet from those soft, mewling, gasping sounds he was making, it was almost funny… At least until Dean came into the room.

He was stunned for half a second, by how quickly Sam moved, where had the knife come from—When the hell did Sam put on fifteen pounds of solid muscle! His back slammed into the wall hard enough to make black spots dance in his vision and Sam pressed unerringly forward with the blade.

The girl squawked, startled and backed up into a corner—

Dean was sure Sam was going to slit his throat, would look him right in the eye and push the blade in between his clavicle and his Adam's apple slow. It would pop as it impacted his trachea, the air would hiss out of the hole in a foamy spit of blood, shove through and stick in his spine, would slice right through it if Sam turned the blade at the right moment. He'd gag and his body would go into brief spasm, then everything below the blade would go coldnumb, paralysis. His bladder and bowel would contract then loosen and it would only take about three minutes for him to bleed out all his spinal fluid, seizures, suffocation, death... lying there in his own piss and filth with a knife in his neck. 

Bobby shoved into the room, grabbed Sam around the chest and hauled him back before the blade made contact.

“WHO ARE YOU!” Sam’s eyes were rage darkened and the tendons in his neck stood out in stark relief. A little bit of spit flew out of his mouth when he shouted, like he’d become some slavering ANIMAL in his fury. Dean hadn’t ever seen him this angry, this out of control… at least not here.

“Like you didn’t do this!” Dean advanced, heat building in his gut. He didn't want this, didn't want his baby brother to SEE what it was like down there and Sam had walked right into it. Right fucking into it.

“DO WHAT!”

Bobby finally managed to get a word in, shouted it right into Sam’s ear because that was the only thing he could do to make Sam listen; “It’s HIM! It’s him, Sam. I’ve been through this already! It’s. Really. HIM!”

The change happened in his eyes first, shock that spread down from the top of his head to the tips of his toes like a cracked egg on someone’s scalp. Oozed down and froze the wrath in an instant. "What?" He blinked, shook his head as if to clear it and was Sam again. Just Sammy, hunched shoulders and thin too long limbs. Big puppy eyes and stupid hair.

“I know,” Dean let his hands lower back to his sides, palms still exposed, empty. Stepped forward in as nonthreateningly a manner as he could. 

Bobby let Sam go and stepped back but stood ready in case he’d have to intervene again. 

Sam was visibly shaking now but stayed on his feet.

Dean put on a smile; “I look fantastic, huh?”

Sam looked like he wanted to either punch him or curl up into a ball and weep, he couldn’t quite tell which. He settled on stepping forward and wrapping both arms around Dean’s chest, squeezing like his life depended on it. 

Sam’s hair was wet, smelled like shampoo and soap and he felt solid and vital against Dean’s chest, just squeezed and ground his teeth to keep from crying. 

Sam was the one to pull away first, stepped back a good arms’ length and swallowed visibly. Nodded, assumed the stance of a good little soldier and nodded again. Hug? What hug? There was no hug.

The girl in the corner cleared her throat; “So, what? Are you two like, _together?”_

Sam seemed confused for a minute; “What?” Realization wiped the color from his face; “NO! No…” He laughed.

Dean raised an eyebrow as if just noticing she was standing there practically naked, in the same room as his little brother and what this situation implied. 

“He’s my brother.” 

Dean was still having some trouble reconciling this woman with Sam and the mussed state of the bed. Well, damn… Maybe he should have left Sammy alone sooner, he seemed to have gotten laid without any problem without Dean there to compete with. 

“Oh…” The girl’s head was wobbling in disbelief; “Got it, I guess… I should—“ She pointed out into the hall; “Probably go,” She glanced sidelong at Dean again and stepped around them to pick up her clothes. 

“Yeah—yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Sorry.” 

The girl looked very uncomfortable.

Dean smiled, couldn’t help it, his brother had been WITH this girl and he was picking Dean over sex. Awesome. 

She got dressed quickly and smiled at Sam as she left; “SO, call me, alright?”

“Right, right, sure thing, Kathy—“

“It’s Chrissy…” She looked vaguely heartbroken, but turned and left anyway. 

Dean found it mildly amusing and spent a few seconds taking in the overt theme of the room, waited while Sam shuffled back in and took a seat on the bed. Dean leaned his hips back against the dresser and expelled a breath through pursed lips. As glad as he was that Sam had gotten himself laid, there was important business to take care of. Like the fate of his brother's soul; “So, tell me… What was the cost?”

Sam looked at him with his eyebrows up; “The girl?” He laughed; “I don’t pay, Dean,” He turned back to his shoes. 

“It’s not funny, Sam.”

Sam obviously thought it was funny. 

“To bring me back,” He leveled a stare at Sam and tightened his fingers on his arm, wanted that little bit of a sting to keep himself in check. “What’d it cost? Was it just your soul or was it somethin’ worse?”

“You think I made a deal?” He looked disgusted.

“That’s exactly what we think,” Bobby looked at him evenly, cold. 

Sam met him without flinching; “Well I didn’t.” 

Dean could see the tension in his shoulders, “Don’t lie to me.”

Sam looked insulted; “I’m not lying.”

Dean couldn’t believe him, something just—just SCREAMED ‘OFF’ about his brother but he couldn’t probe deep enough without getting hands on him to see what it was; “So what? Now I’m off the hook and you’re on? Is that it?” He could feel Bobby’s gaze like ice crawling on his skin, he wanted to snap, wanted to tell him to stop staring, wanted to… He shivered. “You’re some demon’s bitch boy? I didn’t want to be saved like this.” _If this was how you did it you should have just left me down there. It wasn't worth it. I'M not worth it._

Sam is on his feet, trying to tower over Dean menacingly but Dean just stares right back, sets his jaw and tightens his hands into fists. 

“I wish I had done it, alright!” Sam’s eyes are cold somehow, dark. 

Dean grabs him, ignores the gasp Bobby lets out as he comes to his feet as well. 

That hollow calm is settling over Dean again and it takes everything he’s got not to slam his brother against the wall and start taking out chunks of him. “There’s no other way that this could have gone down, so tell the truth!”

Sam’s face twists and he snarls it back, growls it like a wounded animal; “I tried everything!” He knocks Dean’s hands away hard enough to bruise and speaks like his voice hurts. “That’s the truth. I tried opening the Devil’s Gate, hell, I TRIED to bargain, Dean, but no demon would deal, alright?”

Dean lowers his chin, takes it in, watches the reaction of Sam’s pupils, waits for the telltale flicker… but it isn’t there.

“You were rotting in Hell, for months. For MONTHS and I couldn’t stop it… So, I’m sorry it wasn’t me, alright?” The bravado slips… falls and he looks hurt, looks broken a little bit and can’t meet Dean’s eyes; “Look, Dean, I’m sorry…”

He nods, feels relieved and afraid in the same moment because if it wasn’t Sam then who was it? “It’s okay, Sammy… You don’t have to apologize, I believe you.” 

“Don’t get me wrong,” Bobby’s voice was low, “I am gladdened that Sam’s soul remains intact, but it does raise a sticky question…”

Dean wants to laugh at how absurd it is; “If he didn’t pull me out, then what did?”

Sam lets his breath out and scrubs a hand through his hair, motions toward the couch. He disappears for a moment, comes back with bottles of beer and takes a seat across from where Dean’s settled on the coffee table.

“So, what were you doin’ around here if you weren’t diggin’ me outta my grave?” He twists the cap off and levels a hard stare at his brother. 

Sam sighs; “Well, once I figured out I couldn’t save you –uhm—I started huntin’ down Lilith. Tryin’ to get some payback.”

Bobby scoffs; “All by yourself? Who you think you are, your old man?”

“Uh,” Sam looks down, like a kid being scolded for not eating their veggies; “Yeah, I’m sorry, Bobby… I-I should have called… I was pretty messed up.”

Dean spots something near the edge of the bed and climbs to his feet, lifts it on the end of one finger and dangles it in Sam’s face. “Oh, yeah… I really feel your pain.”

Sam goes a little pink in the face, it’s nice that some things haven’t changed. 

“Anyways… Uh—I was checkin these demons out in Tennessee when out of nowhere they took a hard left, booked up here.”

“When?”

“Yesterday morning.” 

“When I busted out.”

“You think these demons are here because of you?”

It was a sound theory, their only one at the moment, he shrugged.

Sam’s nose scrunched; “But why?”

“Well, I don’t know? Some badass demon drags me out and now this? It’s gotta be connected somehow.”

Bobby’s brows are down again; “How you feelin’ anyway?”

It bubbles up suddenly in his chest, that weird inexplicable urge to just strangle him, he swallows it down but it writhes in his stomach like it’s alive; “I’m a little hungry.”

“No, I mean; You feel like yourself? Anything, strange or different?”

“Or demonic?”

He shrugs innocently.

“Bobby, how many times I gotta prove I’m ME.”

“Yeah, well, listen. No demon’s letting you lose outta the goodness of their hearts—“

Dean rolls his eyes.

“—they gotta have somethin’ nasty planned.”

“Well, I feel fine.”

Bobby doesn’t look convinced.

“Okay, look,” Sam inhales, waves his beer around to get their attention; “We don’t know what they’re planning. We got a pile of questions and no shovel… We need help.” 

Bobby is still looking at him, Dean wants to make him stop… He can’t stare without his eyes—

“I know a psychic, a few hours from here. Somethin’ this big, maybe she’s heard the other side talkin’.”

“Hell, yeah, it’s worth a shot,” He’s desperate, wants to find out what this thing is before it comes for him again. Wants to get out of this room for a while so he can BREATHE again.

Bobby climbs to his feet pulling his phone from his back pocket and skedaddles into the bathroom to talk or take a piss or maybe both. 

Dean climbs to his feet with a slow breath. His hands are shaking and he doesn’t exactly feel hungry anymore but Food is a good excuse as any to escape from this place for a little while.

“Hey, wait—“ Sam gets to his feet “You’ll probably want this back,” His fingers delve into the collar of his shirt and drag a black cord from around his neck. 

It feels heavy and cool in his palm. Unfamiliar, but the memories burn under the surface like a fever and Dean swallows a knot in his throat as he just looks at it. “Thanks.”

Sam nods, watches him expectantly as he slips it back around his neck, looks like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. “Yeah, don’t mention it,” He wets his lips with the tip of his tongue and a wrinkle of tension builds between his brows; “Hey, Dean… What was it like?”

His heart beats too hard. “What, hell?”

He doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t know. I-I m-must have blacked it out.”

Sam’s jaw tightens.

“I don’t remember a damned thing.” 

Sam nods but that line of tension doesn’t leave his brow. 

They stay the night, or what’s left of it, Bobby brings up books from his car and they spend most of the night looking through them at the different kinds of creatures and demons that may be powerful enough to pull this off. The pizza does finally arrive, Dean picks at a piece, peels the meat off then puts the mutilated slice back in the box and pops open another beer. He tries to sleep, gets halfway there and phantom hands crawl up his limbs, seal over his mouth and pin him down—open him up. Familiar twisted faces loom over him in the nightmare darkness. 

He can’t move. Can’t seem to breathe or wake himself up from the dream, just has to lay there and let it happen, scream at himself to fight—to wake up—get Sam—SAM SAMSAMSAM—

He isn’t sure what wakes him finally, but it had reached the point that he believed he’d never crawled out of his grave at all, that it had only been another torture. Maybe Bobby grunts in his sleep, or Sam rolls over. Whatever it is Dean sits bolt upright with teeth clamped down on a cry. He doesn’t make a sound, pants for breath and slips off the fold away, grabs up his bag and changes out of his sweat soaked shirt. There’s a hollow ache in his stomach and part of him thinks shoving some fingers down his throat to fish out whatever’s been forced down in there is a good idea. 

He washes his face, presses cold wet palms into his skin tries to squash the visions from the back of his eyes. Stares at his reflection and doesn’t know who he’s looking at. 

He’d never paid much attention to his eyes before other than to perfunctorily identify their color and the state of his pupils, they’re all he can see now. Dark and scared and dead inside. There’s nothing in them but empty green. 

He remembers how there had been a mirror strapped over his face for a while so close all he’d been able to see was the reflection of his own eyes. The terror and agony so plainly visible in them and no way to escape it, how he’d wound up singing and sobbing trying to separate himself from it anyway, but it just wasn’t possible. Pain in hell wraps itself around you and will NOT let go... Ever. Patheticweakdisgusting—

He remembers meeting himself in that room Before. Remembers everything he’d told himself… How right he’d been.

He wants to be sick, but can’t manage it, even when he does give up and shove some fingers in his mouth, all he ends up doing is scratching the back of his throat raw and contaminating his tongue with the phantom taste of grave dirt and rot and blood from his torn nails and knuckles.

He sits in the corner where the wall meets the tub for a long time, elbows on his knees, shoulders bunched up defensively staring where he could see himself in the mirror, unable to look away.

Disgusting…

They’re up before dawn, people are starting to move on the street. Bobby wants to be gone before morning rush hour.

“She’s about four hours down the interstate, try to keep up.” 

Dean wonders briefly where Bobby’s going, wonders how he’s supposed to keep up, then he sees the Impala and Sam makes a noise in his throat;

“I assume you’ll want to drive.”

For an instant he can’t believe he heard his brother correctly. He catches the keys, laughs because he can; “I almost forgot!”

Sam wonders how Dean could have ‘almost forgot’ his car. He’s been obsessed with it since he was little. He loves this car more than pretty much anything.

“Hey, sweetheart!” He runs the tips of his abused fingers over the fender, traces her lines and has to bite back the tension in his throat; “You miss me?” His voice comes out strained and thin, like he's been reunited with a long lost love after years apart.

The door still squeaks when he opens it and the interior still smells the same. The seat groove is still shaped like his behind. He wiggles into it excitedly and pets the steering wheel. It’s familiar and smooth and makes his chest tighten in the opposite of fear. He’s confused however, by the strange little arm sticking out beside the radio.

Sam slides into the passenger seat with a sigh. Like everything is right with the world once more. 

“What the hell is that?” Dean doesn’t even dignify the contraption by pointing at it. 

“It’s an iPod jack,” Sam sure does look proud of himself. 

Dean feels a strange flutter of disgust under his heart; “You were supposed to take care of her, not douche her up.”

Sam chuckles. “Dean, I thought it was my car.”

_Oh, really? You’re so adorable with my fist sticking out of your face._ He rolls his eyes and turns the keys in the ignition. He can deal with that explanation… at least until the engine starts and the radio turns on and some whiny sounding chick with guitars and tambourines starts playing. That… no, that he can’t live with. No. 

Enn-fucking-oh.

He turns to his brother; “Really?”

Sam looks at him innocently and shrugs.

Dean feels like perhaps the honor of his baby has been avenged as he tugs the ‘jack’ out of the cassette player and tosses it into the back seat like it’s something slimy and disgusting. 

Sam snorts. 

Bobby’s a good five car lengths ahead of them, just tail lights and every so often the soft tap of brake lights as he takes corners too quick. 

They’re out of the city and heading south when Dean speaks, mostly because it’s what’s expected, not because he really wants to say anything. “There’s still one thing that’s bothering me.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, the night I bit it—or got bit…” He chuckles at the irony but Sam doesn’t think it was funny. “How’d you make it out? I thought Lilith was gonna kill you.” 

“Uh— She tried, she couldn’t.” 

“What do you mean ‘she couldn’t’?”

“She fired this like… burning light at me and—it didn’t leave a scratch. Like I was immune or somethin’.”

“Immune?”

He snorted; “Yeah, I don’t know who was more surprised, her or me,” He exhaled and shifted back in his seat, stretching his legs out into the corners of the foot well. “She left pretty fast after that.” 

Dean scratched his back against the seat; “Huh… What about Ruby, where’s she?”

“Dead?” He shook his head; “Burnt out.” 

“So,” He licked his lips; “You been using your freaky ESP stuff?”

Sam looks at him with one brow raised; “No.”

“Sure about that? Ah, well, now that you’ve got immunity, whatever the hell that is. Just wondering what kind of other weirdo crap you got goin on.” 

“Nothing, Dean. Like, you didn’t want me to go down that road, so I didn’t go down that road. It was practically your dying wish.” 

Dean looks at him askance, shrugs and turns back to the road; “Well, let’s keep it that way.” 

It’s his eyes. Subtle, but Dean catches it—latches on and doesn’t let go. Sam’s keeping something from him. He’s not sure what it is, but the lie is there, burning below the surface and Dean feels sour inside. Remembers those twisted ugly voices hissing in his ear, telling him all the horrible things his brother was doing without him.

_“He killed a man yesterday, Dean. Isn’t it wonderful? Killed him with that bitch Ruby… Smiled as they drained him dry.”_

_“You… you’re lying.”_

_“Now why would I bother lying when the truth hurts ten times as much? You’re already here, Dean, I don’t have to trick you anymore.”_

Bobby taps his brakes again and Dean has to stomp his own to keep from knocking into him, slows down for a few deer crossing the road and they continue on. 

It’s about nine AM when they make it, a little house in the suburbs with a black door. 

Bobby knocks and it’s not four seconds until it opens and a woman steps out… Well, more like swaggers out if he wants to be honest about it. She’s all sass and innuendo and liquid sex from what Dean can see.

Needless to say, she is not at all what Dean had expected when Bobby mentioned her as a ‘psychic friend’. He’d pictured maybe some older woman, a little dumpy thing with glasses and too many cats. Not… not THIS.

She’s tall, thin, with dark hair and light eyes. She’s wearing a Ramones shirt and smiles with everything she’s got, laughs in genuine good humor and pulls Bobby in for a hug. Growls and hefts the older man off the ground. 

Dean gives his brother a sideways look and Sam lifts his brows as if to say; ‘she’s all yours.’

It’s all the permission he needs. 

“So, these the boys?” She crosses her arms and regards them from under her lashes, still grinning. 

“Sam, Dean… Pamela Barnes.”

She looks them up and down appraisingly with one brow lifted and hums in approval, pink creeping into her cheeks. 

“Dean Winchester… out of the fire and back in the frying pan, huh?”

He rolls his eyes to Bobby and lets his breath out.

Bobby looks back at him flatly. He almost expects the older man to swat the back of his head and say ‘Well answer her, boy. Don’t just stand there like an idjit.’

“Makes you a rare individual.”

Sam is trying not to move too much, enjoying his brother’s discomfort under the woman’s penetrating gaze. He remembers Dean bringing back women that looked similar to her, same skin tone, hair and eyes. He knows what’s going through Dean’s head… or what at least should be. 

Dean nods; “If you say so.” 

She takes a breath and nods them in. 

The interior of the house is much how Dean expected it a mixture of modest furnishings and lavish decorations. Posters and memorabilia, sharp looking things, smooth looking things, shiny things, cloth wall hangings and dark curtains, all of it mashed together to give the place an almost jungle like feeling. The energy in the air was tangible, at one time Dean may have found it hard to keep his libido from getting away from him, now… now his heart sped up for an entirely different reason. 

“So, d’joo hear anything?” Bobby turns to look at her as she shuts the door.

“Well, I ouijii’d my way through a dozen spirits, no one seems to know who broke your boy out, or why.”

“So, what’s next?”

She nods, puts on her business face; “Uh—Séance, I think. See if we can see who did the deed.”

Bobby looks uncomfortable; “You’re not gonna summon the damned thing here.”

She laughs. “No, I just wanna get a sneak peek at it. Like a crystal ball without the crystal!”

Dean watches her go, how her hips sway; “I’m game,” He wants to know more than anything. Wants to know so he can figure out a way to kill it before it comes back. There’s no way this thing pulled him out just cause it wanted to, there’s a reason and he knows it ain’t a good one. 

Bobby lets out a puff of air and follows them into the main room. 

Dean nudges Sam with his elbow when Pamela crouches down to pull things out of a cabinet. Her jeans ride low enough that the tattoo at the small of her back is visible and the denim cuts into her skin just enough that her backside is heart shaped where she’s bent over. 

Sam lets out a soft hum of approval. 

“Who’s Jesse?” Dean imagines some big guy covered in tattoos and piercings with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, maybe a motorcycle.

Pamela finds the candles and turns to look at him, laughs; “Well, it wasn’t forever.”

Dean nods and looks away; “His loss.” 

She smiles, leans close in passing and looks him up and down; “Might be your gain.”

Sam’s eyebrows hike up toward his hairline and for some strange reason Dean feels closer to him in that moment than they ever have before, ogling the same woman. It’s a beautiful thing.

“Dude, I’m so in.”

“Yeah, she’s gonna eat you alive,” Sam looks mildly aroused and nervous in the same moment. He knows his brother’s type and this fits all the bills. 

“Hey, I just got outta jail!” Dean tries to get the point across with a subtle shift of his hips; “Bring it.”

Sam looks uncomfortable now, wants to bring up the times he’s walked in on his brother in compromising situations with fast women, decides against it and just shakes his head with a laugh.

Pamela turns back to the cabinet for more candles and fits her palm against Sam’s back pocket; “You’re invited too, Grumpy.” 

Dean smiles until her back is turned, then levels a stern finger in his brother’s face; “You are NOT invited.” 

Sam chokes on a laugh and watches his brother help the woman—like she needed help—set the candles out on the ritual cover she’d spread over her table. 

It’s basic, they’ve seen and read about séances before. Housewives on TV do it, shriek and giggle over bottles of wine. In movies teenagers do it and ensure their doom. It’s very similar to everything from the TV, but this is real, not made-up bullshit. 

Pamela centers herself at the head of the table. Rubs circles on her brow and sternum and breathes deeply, “Right, take each other’s hands.”

They do, reluctantly.

“And,” She takes a deep breath and slides her hand forward over Dean’s knee and up his inner thigh; “I need to touch something our mystery monster touched—“

For a second he’s afraid, feels claws instead of her fingernails and his knees bang the underside of the table as he shoves her hand away; “Woah! Well, he didn’t touch me there.”

Pamela laughs again, playfully. She’s full of giggles and good humor, nothing like Missouri Mosley. “My mistake.” 

Sam is staring at him and when Dean looks up his brother looks emphatically where their hands are joined and Dean realizes he’s tightened his grip to nearly bone crushing, has to breathe in and make himself let go, pull off his flannel and hike up the sleeve of his t-shirt.

He tries to ignore the concerned expression on Sam’s face in favor of watching Pamela, but he can feel it burning on his temple, like Sam’s gaze is a laser beam. 

Pamela fits her palm against the raised shapes on his skin and Dean tries not to meet his brother’s eyes, just puts his fingers in Sam’s palm like a limp fish and closes his eyes. 

Pamela takes a deep breath, closes her eyes and speaks in a low, commanding tone; “I invoke, conjure and command you, appear unto me before this circle.”

Dean peeks out at her when she repeats herself, curiously, wondering what exactly she’s playing at ‘commanding’ some demon boss like she owns it. He’d tried that once… didn’t work out too well.

The TV clicks on when she finishes the third repetition and Dean feels his heart jump in his chest as she starts a forth. It’s always a bad sign when TVs click on without being touched. Doesn’t anybody else understand that? 

“I invoke, conjure and command you—“ A bead of sweat slides down her forehead and the next word out of her mouth makes Dean’s blood run cold.

“Castiel—“

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	4. Omitting Certian Truths is Not the Same as Lying... It's Worse

0-0-0

His head whips toward her so hard his neck cramps. He stares, thinks maybe she’s probing his head, not talking to some demon, screams at her to GET OUT but she doesn’t react… then he wonders if this is just some demon trick, using a name he knows will hurt Dean the most.

“Castiel—No,” Pamela’s brow wrinkles in concentration; “Sorry, Castiel, I don’t scare easy.”

He says it, it feels heavy, foreign on his tongue and yet right at home; “Castiel?”

“Its name, it’s whispering to me, warning me to turn back—“

Dean tries to tug his arm away from her but she digs her fingernails in and it’s like an electro magnet, she’s stuck to him and he can’t pull back. He can’t get away—

_Tieddownpinnedcrushedbloodandashandbileinhisthroatohgodstopstopstopstoppleasejuststopidon'tpleasejuststopnononodon’tohgodithurtspleasepleasepleaesestopit_

— He doesn’t want this anymore. He wants it to stop, just stop—Please, just stop!

“Dean?” Sam whispers his name, shakes his arm and Dean notices how tightly he’s gripping his brother’s hand, notices the strained pressure as Bobby grips him back just as hard, tries to get through to him.

“Pamela,” Bobby’s voice is low, barely holding back the pain of his hand being crushed; “I think we better stop—“

“NO,” She snarls it, pushes through; “I’ve almost got it. I want to see—“

Dean can’t hear anything but a low animal whine, like a cat that’s run over on the highway but not quite dead yet. He doesn’t know where that noise is coming from but he wants it to stop. Wants to put a bullet in that thing’s head to get it out of its misery but he can’t move. Can’t feel anything but his own blood coursing through his veins, can’t see anything but when that demon—that THING had… had laughed and… and he— It’s him! It’s HIM! He’s the one who pulled Dean out, that white-eyed son of a bitch and he’s laughing! Whispering into Pamela’s ear words that he knows will hurt Dean most, words that he knows will make those memories BURN—

He can’t do this— Oh, Jesus, he can’t do this! “No—no, please, please!”

“Dean—“ Sam’s voice sounds terrified, far away, muffled like something has its hands over Dean’s ears—

Holding his head still, covering his mouth, claws holding his limbs down—opening him up—that low warm tone with ice behind it; _‘I’m here.’_

“DEAN… Bobby, something’s wrong—“

“Pam, you gotta—”

Pamela’s still chanting, louder all the time; “I conjure and command you, show me your face! I conjure and command you, show me your face! I conjure and command you, show—“

She screams.

The candles burn bright, like acetylene torches, the wax melts down like water spilled from a pitcher, it runs out into the circle on the altar cloth into exotic, curling, wild, unnatural patterns, boils back in on itself and forms pointed forked spires that reach up and up and up, climbing and dripping upward onto the ceiling where they grow and reach toward one another like stalagmites and stalactites in caves—like TEETH in some immense creature’s gaping mouth. Wreathed and lit from the inside by flame—

The smell is familiar, burning flesh and hair… blood and fire and PAIN—

Dean blacks out for a second. His vision goes gray and he senses nothing. He comes to slumped forward over the table gasping for erratic little sips of air with wetness rolling down his face, shaking like a newborn and Bobby’s shouting, kneeling in the floor cradling the woman to his chest; “Call nine-one-one!”

Sam has his hands on Dean, supporting him and the chair he’d been sitting in is tipped over backward, halfway across the room—

“Damnit, boy, I said call an ambulance!” Bobby roars, like he’s turned into a lion or something. Dean flinches and curls in on himself a little to get away from the noise.

Sam reacts, gives Dean’s shoulder a squeeze turns and trips on his chair. He catches himself on the wall and darts for the phone in the kitchen.

Dean pries his eyes open, sees his fist tangled in the ritual cloth—the cuts on his knuckles have split open again he’s squeezing it so tightly but he can’t make himself let go. Can’t. It takes everything he’s got not to give in to the abyss like panic in his chest.

Dean finds Bobby’s eyes across the room, notes the concern and fear in the older man’s eyes. He sees Pamela’s shaking, sweat pouring off her in sheets, her eyelids are blackened, bloody and blistered, crimson tracks mar each cheek downward like lightning bolts. Her nose is running like she’s crying but there are no tears.

When her eyes open Dean is slightly fascinated, unable to look away because he can see into her eye sockets, negative spaces in her pretty face all blackened and bloody inside, quivering—He feels the urge to gag but can’t quite manage it.

The stench of scorched flesh is thick in the air.

“Oh—oh, God! I-I can’t see—I can’t see!”

Bobby looks like he wants to vomit, terrified and Dean breathes slowly, carefully trying to avoid the smell and the growing whir of voices in his head.

Sam comes back in a moment later, he’s pale and his hands are in constant motion, one large palm presses between Dean’s shoulder blades and he calls out firmly; “Dean? Can you hear me?”

He wobbles his head, doesn’t lift it from the tabletop, continues to stare where his fingers are clenched in the ritual cloth.

“Can you move?”

“Yeah,” Why is his throat so sore?

Sam waits patiently for a five count, then carefully starts tugging the cloth from between his brother’s fingers, mutters softly that it’s OK but they gotta get outta here before the ambulance shows up. He glances at Bobby but the older man jerks his chin toward the door; “I’ll catch up,” And goes back to mumbling in a gruff comforting manner to the sobbing wounded woman in his arms.

Dean’s legs don’t work. He’s not sure why but Sam loops an arm under Dean’s shoulders, throws one arm around his neck and practically drags his brother out, pushes him bodily into the passenger side of the Impala and hoofs it to the driver’s door, doesn’t even have it shut before the key’s in the ignition and they’re moving.

The world passes in smears of color and fans of shattered light, Dean feels heavy, dumb, like his head is swollen… It reminds him of when he’d been nineteen and Bobby had taken him to get his wisdom teeth removed, only instead of blood in his mouth he’s pretty sure his pants are wet and fuck it all but he is NOT going to think about that right now. Pissing himself like an infant because—

_‘I’m here.’_

—He shudders, squeezes his eyes closed and fights back the streaks of moisture that sluice down his face.

Sam’s making soft popping noises, he does it when he’s scared. Hasn’t done it since he was fifteen and went after his first werewolf. Purses his lips and compresses air behind them until—POP. His fingers tap like machinegun fire against the steering wheel and for a long time he doesn’t say anything. Not until they’re back on the interstate and he looks over to see Dean is still shaking, slumped like a corpse against the door and his breathing sounds wet, labored, too quick.

“Are you OK?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Dean,” It comes out louder than he’d intended, like a bark—too much like Dad.

Dean flinches, fingers digging into his sleeves. “Stop the car,” It comes out hushed, barely audible.

“What?”

“Stopthecar.”

“Why—“

Dean makes a wet belching noise and slaps a hand over his mouth.

The tires and engine protest, a few cars traveling behind them lay on their horns and Sam jerks the wheel onto the berm, slaps her in park and watches as Dean pops open the door, leans out and coughs out a wave of yellow bile and water.

“I’m OK,” He says it between heaves while Sam sits there and watches the cars pass by, tries not to breathe in or watch how his brother’s back tenses as he retches. Dean spits out a glob of mucus and gall then says it again like he’s trying to convince himself more than anybody else; “I’m OK.”

Dean doesn’t ask for the car keys, which is evidence enough to Sam that something’s wrong. Something Big, capital ‘B’ and all. Dean had reacted to the name, not Pamela’s touch. Not the séance itself. The Name.

He’d heard the name and Boom, he’d changed. He’d locked up and all the color had drained from his face. Sam had seen him fighting to pull away from Pamela had seen the frightened-sick urge written all over Dean’s normally stoic face like he’d been splashed in paint. And then that noise—Jesus CHRIST that noise. Sam hadn’t even been sure Dean was making it and he’d been looking right at him.

_“No—no, please, please!”_

Sam had never seen his brother look so scared before and he knew in that instant, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Dean had lied to him. He might not remember the whole nine yards, but he did remember something from Hell. Something that was bad enough to send him into full blown panic mode. Something that was bad enough to make his pulse double where it pounded in his wrist, all the color to drain from his face and his pupils to expand like he’d slipped into shock.

And the way he’d said it, how high pitched his voice had gone, the sudden vice like grip of Dean’s hand on his own, how Bobby had flinched and his eyes had popped open to watch Dean’s reaction.

Even now with Dean hunched in the passenger seat, arms around his stomach, staring out the window, Sam could see his brother shaking. He was STILL afraid.

All signs pointed to something very, very bad.

The drive back to Pontiac was silent. Sam contemplated turning on the radio but Dean flinched when it clicked and slapped his hand away again. Sam drove slowly, kept passing glances his brother’s way. He wanted to stop for food, his stomach growled, but Dean hadn’t moved in a while. He was motionless, watching the world pass by through glazed empty eyes.

Part of him wanted to say something, part of him wanted to call Dean out on this, but at the same time it just cemented in his mind the fact that what he was doing was right. He… he had to be strong enough to protect Dean.

Sam took him back to the hotel sent a few texts to Bobby while Dean took a long shower, watched concerned as Dean came out shivering even harder with a blue tint to his lips and nail beds, arms hidden in the sleeves of his shirt. His knuckles were bloodless but there were red smears under the broken ends of his nails.

Sam tried to make small talk and when that didn’t work, started pouring over the books Bobby had left spread out. He read passages aloud about pagan gods, Norse mythology, Hel was the goddess of the underworld—Dean shook his head. Maybe a reaper—No… Kali was a possibility, she was the Dark Mother—Dean shook his head yet again, didn’t say why, just shook his head.

He wasn’t even really reading what was in the books in front of him, was just staring at the pictures or the translations of text with the tip of his pen bleeding out onto a page in his notebook.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

His head wobbled in the negative and he didn’t say a word.

“Dean, you’ve gotta talk sometime. This thing—whatever it is, we have its name—“

“’s not its name…”

“Pamela said—“

“It lied…”

“Why would it lie about its name?”

Dean shook his head.

“How am I supposed to help you if you won’t even tell me what happened?”

Dean was focused on something in the book to his left, just staring down at it sightlessly.

“Dean, I’m talking to you—“

Nothing.

Sam lunged to his feet, kicked the coffee table so hard it screeched and Dean visibly flinched. He had to get out, had to get away from Dean for a while and calm down. His brother was in no condition to handle Sam’s anger issues right now, he’d practically had a psychological breakdown just from hearing a name. A NAME!

He growled, snatched up the car keys and swung on his jacket.

“Sam?”

“I’ll be back… I, at least, want something to eat,” He slammed the door quite hard and let his breath out in a hiss.

An hour later Dean was right where Sam had left him. The salt lines were thicker, Almost twice the thickness and depth Sam had put down and when he opened the door Dean had a shotgun trained on him, but as soon as he stepped over the lines Dean relaxed back against the cushions of the fold out and picked up another book.

Sam shuffled forward and put a bag down by Dean’s knee, handed him a beer and took a seat himself on the end of the bed. “I’m sorry about earlier… I—I just want to understand what’s going on.”

Dean didn’t touch the food but took a few slow sips of the beer; “Demons… But when is that new.”

“So… who is Castiel?”

To his credit, Dean doesn’t flinch, just looks down at his hands then away, doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes; “A demon.”

“So you lied to me.”

It’s almost as if he’s chosen not to hear what Sam says, just—Nope, sorry, can’t hear you, stubborn like a four-year-old.

“Dean.”

“Bobby call back yet?” His eyes are hard, challenging, daring Sam to ask again.

Sam breathes in slowly, lets it out and clenches his jaw so tight his ears ring like a twenty-four bell carillon.

Dean doesn’t eat anything… But he drinks his share of beer. Propped himself up on the fold away with books spread out around him and read for hours with his jaw clenched.

Sam sat on his own bed reading, sometimes he climbed to his feet and paced while he did it, other times he didn’t. Bobby called, said Pamela had stabilized and was out of ICU. Sam relayed the message and ground his teeth when Dean snapped out that Pamela’s eyes got burned outta her head because of them then lapsed back into silence—Sam didn’t like it, the quiet made him nervous. He rubbed his palms on the knees of his jeans; “What do you want to eat?”

“’not hungry—“

“Bullshit. You didn’t eat last night, or this morning—”

“I’m not hungry, Sam… You want me pukin’ my guts up again?”

“And beer on an upset stomach is OK?”

He scowled.

“I’m bringing you back something. You ARE eating.”

“I’ll eat when I’m damned well hungry, Sam—“

 _Well then you damned well better be hungry by the time I get back!_ He slammed the door on the way out. He’d never seen Dean so SCARED before. He just—just couldn’t do it and it was so obvious it was painful. Dean couldn’t do it and Sam couldn’t push it. His brother had come back from Hell. FROM HELL... What do you say to that?

Sam made a phone call while he was out, set a time, midnight. Witching hour, whatever you wanted to call it. It was the right time for black deeds to be done.

He brings back pie and boiled chicken with mashed potatoes to the room. Sits across from his brother and glares at him until Dean picks it up and takes spitefully large, untidy bites. Stares until Dean’s eaten it as well as the slice of Cherry before he’s even remotely appeased.

Dean reads and writes in his notebook for most of the night, his expression is tense and every so often his hand goes to his stomach, like the food is just sitting there, an uncomfortable lump under his shirt. He goes to the bathroom a little bit later and Sam follows him for some reason, stands outside the door and listens to make sure his brother isn’t making himself throw up.

“Sam?”

He doesn’t say anything, pretends he’s across the room not standing there like some weirdo LISTENING.

“Get away from the fuckin’ door.”

He does simply because Dean isn’t giving him much of a choice.

Dean nods off sometime after ten thirty and Sam creeps out once he’s sure Dean is actually asleep, head tilted back on the pull out, lips parted, breath quiet and even and slow.

It’s not half an hour until Dean’s woken by the buzz of the TV and the radio at once. He’s confused initially, doesn’t quite remember where he is… Stares at the lore books all around him, the empty bed where he remembered Sam being before he’d dropped off… Where is Sam?

Why is the TV on, why… He rolls out of bed, grabs up the sawed off and looks around, makes sure there are salt lines down on the windows and one in front of the door… There’s a smudge, small, doesn’t go all the way through but he’s not taking any chances, he inches toward the door to fix it and—

The whine builds without warning or preamble. High pitched and growing in intensity, stabs into his ears like a white hot icepick, twists and pushes up into his brain—

Something cracks—pops above his head and he glances up in shock. The mirror over the bed is covered in spiderweb like fractures, spreading outward quickly, each shard juddering around on the noise, shaking loose, but he can’t move. Oh, CHRIST that NOISE!

He drops the gun, clamps his hands over his ears and falls to his knees—can’t take it anymore, can feel his sinuses vibrating—can feel his inner ear like golf balls in the back of his throat—choking him— _Please—PLEASE!_

The windows shatter inward but Dean can’t move—can’t stop it—can’t scream for help because his vocal cords are frozen, all that’s coming out is the hiss of a soundless scream.

The mirror gives another sharp crack and Dean throws himself to the side as it tumbles down, shards like knives, cutting slicing, tearing—

The door bursts open and there is Bobby. His mouth moves but Dean can’t hear what he says. He smells blood, can feel something hot and wet running out of his ears, thinks maybe his brains have been liquefied.

Bobby pulls him up and the whine—the screeching stops.

He can’t support himself. His knees give out and Bobby wraps both arms around him, drags him out, presses him against the wall with his bulk and looks him in the eye. His mouth moves again but Dean can’t make out the words. His head hurts. Why can’t he stand up?

Bobby nods, meets his eyes and mouths over-exaggeratedly; “It’s OK!” pulls Dean’s arm over his shoulder and half carries, half drags him down and out the side exit, shoves him into the passenger side of his car and shuts the door.

Dean knows he’s making sound, can feel it low and dumb and off key in his own throat but he can’t hear it. He can’t hear much of anything for a good twenty minutes and by that time they’re out of town.

He stares at the blood caked on his palms for a while and Bobby speaks loudly, practically shouts, must think his eardrums have been ruptured.

“You alright? You hurt?”

When Dean doesn’t answer Bobby snags a rag from one pocket and shoves it at him; “Look, it’s alright if you can’t hear me but don’t ignore me. Not now.”

He takes the rag and inhales slowly, exhales; “I can hear you, Bobby,” And carefully starts scrubbing the blood from his hands, wrings a covered finger in each ear to clear it away and wills the shaking weakness out of his limbs.

Bobby lets out a whooshing breath of relief and focuses on the road for a little while longer. “How you doin’, Kid?”

“Aside from the church bells ringin’ in my head… Peachy.”

Bobby doesn’t really appreciate the sarcasm but he lets it slide.

Dean tosses the rag into the back and pulls out his phone, looks for a signal and dials Sam’s number.

_“Hey.”_

“What’re you doin?”

_“Couldn’t sleep, went to get a burger. ”_

“In my car?”

 _“Force of habit… Sorry—“_ He doesn’t sound sorry; _“What’re you doin’ up? Finally hungry?”_

“No… Well –uh—Bobby’s back. We’re goin’ to grab a beer.”

Bobby gives him a curious look but Dean holds up a finger to keep him quiet.

Sam lets out a breath; _“You need to eat something—”_

“I did, roast beef on rye,” His stomach rolls.

Sam sighs, _“Okay… Just— take it easy, alright?”_

“Yeah, okay… I’ll catch you later.”

_“Yeah.”_

He ends the call and presses a fist to his lips.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell him?”

“Cause he’d just try to stop us.”

“From what?”

“From summoning this thing,” He doesn’t sound as confident as he wants to, so he makes up for it by staring Bobby down, daring him to challenge him.

Bobby looks like he wants to put him over his knee; “You can’t be serious!”

“As a heart attack.”

Bobby gapes at him.

Dean smiles—fails and grinds his teeth to keep his lip from trembling; “I can’t do it alone… I can’t—I can’t let Sam get near that thing, Bobby.”

Bobby stares at him; “You had a fit earlier just hearin’ this thing’s name, Dean. How the hell do you expect to be in the same room with it?”

Dean lifts his hips off the seat and pulls the knife from the sheathe he’s got stuck in the waistband of his jeans; “We got the big-time Magic Knife, you got an arsenal in the trunk… I’d say we got a fighting chance.”

“Will you listen to yourself? Did you SEE what it did to Pam? Dean, we don’t even know what this thing IS!”

“It’s a demon.”

Bobby snorts and shakes his head, like that makes everything better. “I ain’t never seen a demon do THAT to somebody before.”

Dean swallows, feels like he’s got something wriggling around in his belly and twirls the knife in his fingers, feels the sharpness of the blade on his thumb; “He’s powerful, but he’s still a demon… He’s on my turf now and I don’t intend to go down easy.”

Bobby’s shaking his head, fingers drumming nervously; “This is a BAD idea.”

“Yeah, well I couldn’t agree more, but what other choice do we have?” He wants this over. Wants to kill this son of a bitch and move on. He can’t take flinching whenever a TV turns on, or the radio. He can’t take the fear of a name that used to bring him such comfort, even if it was the equivalent of his imaginary friend. He just—he just can’t anymore.

“We could choose life.”

“Bobby,” He exhales slowly, tries to stay calm; “He’s after me… That much we know, right?”

Bobby looks at him like he’s crazy, hell, maybe he is.

“I got no place to hide. I can either get caught with my pants down again, let somebody else—some other innocent person get hurt, or we can make our stand.”

Bobby is quiet for a moment, digests this and speaks quietly, as if it causes him great pain to do so. “Dean… We could use Sam for this.”

“No. Sam stays out of it. I don’t want him anywhere NEAR this guy, understand?”

Bobby sighs and mumbles something under his breath. “That bad huh?”

“Yeah.”

“What’re the chances of you gettin’ me killed tonight?”

Dean doesn’t answer because he really doesn’t know.

0-0-0

It takes a while to find a good place to do it. Someplace they won’t be disturbed or risk hurting other people. Takes another two, maybe three hours to get all the sigils painted on the walls, ceiling and floor; Salt lines laid down and everything as tightly guarded as they’re gonna get it.

“That’s a hell of an art project you got goin’ there,” Dean lets out a breath and turns back to his weapons.

Bobby gives the paint can in his hand another shake, wonders if he should lay down duplicates but doesn’t think there’s enough room. “Traps and talismans from every faith on the globe. I ain’t takin’ any chances,” He sets the can down before he can spray a few on Dean as well, “How you doin?”

“Stakes, iron, silver, salt, knife. He shows up I got a damned good chance of killin’ him.”

Bobby shakes his head, “This is still a bad idea—“

“Yeah, Bobby, I heard you the first ten times… Whatta you say we ring the dinner bell?”

Bobby doesn’t like it, but he knows there’s no talking him out of this insanity, so he takes a deep breath and goes to the altar he’s set up. He doesn’t know what’s about to happen but Dean has a point. If this thing wants him all it’s gotta do is swoop down and nab him. It might be better to just—just do it and get it over with. Do it quick like a band aid or a dislocated shoulder.

Dean listens, breathes slow and deep and scratches at the scar on his arm, pinches at it searching for something, anything to cement his physical body in his mind.

It’s not an overly long ritual, but it feels like it takes forever, calls for a few drops of Dean’s blood he squeezes from a knick in the fleshy part of his palm into the bowl of herbs Bobby’s put together, after that it’s all chanting and invoking.

Dean paces back and forth for a little while, tries to identify every talisman painted on the walls and decides watching Bobby work was less boring so he leans his hips against the table covered in his weapons and waits.

Bobby finishes and turns around with his brows up, rubbing his hands together.

Dean squints; “What, that’s it?”

“What were you expectin’ Harry Potter?”

He scratches his neck; “I don’t know… Maybe a little,” He waves his hand and makes a serious face, mimes a large exuberant explosion from an imaginary cauldron.

Bobby looks him up and down like he’s nuts; “Just keep your eyes peeled,” He hops up to sit on his own table, gun across his knees and focuses on his breathing.

Minutes turn into a quarter hour, that passes into half, then more and Dean’s carved a little hole in his own table with the blade of the knife. He lets out a bored huff; “You sure you did the ritual right?”

Bobby’s shoulders sag and he contemplates how much it would hurt to put a round of rock salt in Dean’s left ass cheek. Just for giggles.

“Sorry…” He flicks the knife in his hand, forward grip, reverse, defensive, offensive, it’s second nature he can’t help it—exhales loudly and puts the blade down. He shakes his foot like he’s trying to hold back the urge to pee and looks around. “Touchy-touchy, huh?”

It happens abruptly. A roar of wind and the aluminum on the barn roof shakes—pulls free in some places and flaps around like it’s being yanked on by angry little hands.

“Wishful thinking,” Dean is on his feet and has a death grip on his gun; “But, maybe it’s just the wind.”

The light above Bobby’s head burns suddenly too bright and pops like a gunshot. Loud—Too loud, with a shower of sparks and shards of melting glass.

The others follow onetwothree in rapid succession. Plunging the whole place into darkness.

Dean sees it in the bright flare of one bulb bursting, the thick wooden beam they’d barred the doors with bows inward like it’s made of plastic—pops—crackles, SPLINTERS and the doors swing open wide.

He’s lit from behind, a dark, too human shape in an overcoat.

To Dean it’s like something ripped directly from a dream and he stumbles back a step into Bobby as the form moves easily over the salt line and approaches, showered by silvery sparks and eyes unflinching.

Dean sees him as he passes across the devil’s trap inside the door. Sees how casually he looks left and right, the curious expression on his face. The exploded lights pop and fry anew as he passes under them, the raw energy He’s giving off forcing them to burn even in death.

Dean thinks he may no longer need to go to the bathroom, raises his gun and fires without a second thought because he—he just—just can’t. He CAN’T. Not again. Please, not again.

Bobby takes the hint and starts firing, one twothreefour rounds and the shotguns are useless. He’s still coming, utterly unaffected, eyes locked on Dean, face unreadable.

Bobby gives him a stunned, disbelieving look, tosses his gun and goes for another.

Dean’s shaking too badly to aim, grabs the first thing he finds and squeezes the bone hilt of the knife so hard he dislocates his own thumb. This ends here. This ends now.

The man-shaped thing stops, looks almost relieved. Settles on his feet and exhales like he’s tired, like he’s just home from work, wants to put his feet up in Dean’s lap and have a beer, watch some TV, maybe go to bed early and mess up the sheets.

Dean tastes bile and the words come out in something like a whimper; “Who are you?”

“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.”

Dean’s heart thuds—boom… boom… boom—“Yeah, thanks for that.”

His head tilts, chin bowing toward his chest just a little, lips just… just shy of one of those soft, barely perceptible smiles—sharing cheeseburgers in the front seat of the Impala, smiling, pleased and thoughtful— and Dean jams the knife into his chest, twists it and steps back—

Nothing happens.

Nothing.

Happens.

HE looks down at the knife, blinks— and locks eyes with Dean as he pulls it free. Drops it to the floor as if it were a toothpick and Dean looks up at Bobby because THIS—oh dear SHIT! THIS is unexpected.

Bobby swings with the iron bar he’s picked up but the guy catches it without even looking, turns, meets his eyes like he’s apologizing and presses two fingers, gently, to the hunter’s brow.

Bobby stares, shocked—and drops like a sack of potatoes.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t get up.

Dean quakes—presses himself back against the wall and gapes because this—this can’t—Nononono—please, no! He’s dreaming, it’s a nightmare and he just—he just has to wake up! Please! Please wake up!

Those blue eyes turn to him. Meet his own and they’re the right color. Old Denim and starlight, his voice is low and even and calm and Dean definitely doesn’t have to go to the bathroom anymore. His vision shrinks in at the edges and his ears ring—

Castiel looks at him and speaks; “We need to talk, Dean.”

His breath comes in short quick asthmatic gasps and his heart is beating so hard, so fast it hurts, feels like it had when he’d been dying and Sam had dragged him to that faith healer whose wife had captured the reaper. Feels worse than that actually, like it’s about to burst in his chest. Just POP and flood his chest cavity with blood and shreds of ruptured tissues.

“Alone.”

Dean nods, what else can he do? This— this thing, whatever it is, breezed through their traps and talismans like nothing and dropped Bobby with two fingers—with a fucking tap to the forehead! Mosquitos don’t even go down that easy.

Dean’s lips tremble but twist around the word in a sneer; “Christo.”

He doesn’t even blink, just pulls his brows down over eyes the color of Dean’s favorite jeans and cocks his head to the side. “Excuse me?”

He swallows and says it again, louder; “Christo!”

He looks Dean up and down like he’s something disgusting, turns and steps up to Bobby’s makeshift altar with an impatient sigh.

Dean watches him, dumbfounded, takes the chance while his back is turned and goes to Bobby. His hands shake and he expects to find cooling pliant flesh when he presses in on his neck…

“Your friend’s alive.”

Dean still checks, puts his fingers under Bobby’s jaw and counts the steady strong beats of his heart, the slow evenness of his breath, relief floods him and he turns slowly to the man—THING standing there not five feet away petting over the pages in Bobby’s book like a toddler with Goodnight Moon, “What do you want?”

“To speak with you… Alone. I’ve said that before.”

“What? Just—just talk?”

“There is much we must discuss—“

Dean’s brow wrinkles in confusion and he rakes his eyes over the—part of him still thinks it’s a demon, but there… There’s something not right about it. He says Christo again under his breath.

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“I… I don’t know,” _I’m just hoping you’re a demon because otherwise I have no idea who the hell you are._

“Castiel—“

“What?” His heart jams up into his neck.

“You asked my name.”

“Bullshit, I didn’t say anything!”

Those eyes lift to his, eyebrows up and confused. “You think loudly. It’s a flaw all humans possess, you believe nothing can hear you when it is quite the opposite… You just can’t hear anything.”

Dean recoils; “You were listening to my thoughts?”

“No. You were thinking loudly… Like screaming in a crowded room.”

Dean rocked to his feet and put himself between Bobby and this—this THING. “Stay OUT of my head!”

“I told you—“

“I don’t care! I don’t know who you are and I don’t want you in my head!”

“Castiel—“

“STOP SAYING THAT!”

“Then listen and I will not have to repeat myself.”

“Castiel isn’t real, he never was! He—he was in my head, a dream—That’s all,” He swallows the tightness in his throat and shivers at the sensation of cold blood damp hands moving on his skin, under it, a face that wasn’t quite right hovering over him— _please don’t…_

Those eyes narrow, his head tilts a fraction to the side.

It’s a fleeting thing, like walking into spider webs in the dark or brushing up against something when you thought it was farther away. Only instead of physical it’s in his head, like butterfly kisses and Dean feels violated. REVOLTED. Feels like this—this THING can see into him. So he pushes the question forward with his mind, screams it as he speaks the words; “I’m gonna ask you one more time; Who. Are. You.”

He speaks slowly, carefully, like dictating to a child, his expression is sedately curious, just a crinkle of his brow. He seems intrigued by whatever he’s seen in Dean’s head; “Castiel.”

Dean grinds his teeth, decides to pick his battles, “Alright then, ‘Castiel’… WHAT are you?”

He says it like it’s obvious as if he doesn’t understand how Dean doesn’t know; “I’m an Angel of The Lord.”

Dean eyes him, looks him up and down. From the tips of his… his stupid untidy hair, to the scuffed toes of his shoes— Even how that dumb suit is baggy… Dean knows what’s hiding under it and he bites his tongue hard enough to taste blood, has to remind himself that THIS isn’t who he wants it to be, it’s some—some creature in fake skin using his memories against him.

Dean pushes himself up to his full height, every muscle tight; “Get the hell out of here,” He says it like a joke, but he means it, will rage and fight and tear with his fingers and teeth because he wants this—this THING, this ‘ANGEL’ gone. “There’s no such thing.”

“This is your problem, Dean,” He shifts forward and lowers his chin toward his chest while he speaks, like he’s talking to a little kid or someone with a mental handicap; “You have no faith.”

Lightning is a new one. Wow, OK, never seen that before—He looks at the window, not expecting there to be storms in the forecast and catches the movement from the corner of his eye—Shadows shifting in the instants between light—He looks back and the bottom drops out of his stomach.

He pictured statues in cemeteries. Soft faced, sad women with bowed heads and pigeon wings. Those things silhouetted on the wall are by no means soft looking. They remind him of a hawk he’d seen dead on the side of the road once. Wings spread out as if still in flight, sharp and untidy, thirsting for wind.

The flashes cease and thunder rolls on for a while into the distance and out of his range of hearing.

Dean swallows back his own amazement and shock and looks down his nose; “Impressive lightshow… Maybe next time you can put a flashlight under your chin and go ‘Woooooo’ at me too.”

Castiel’s expression is somewhere between confused and incredulous.

“Why did you burn out that poor woman’s eyes? What’d she ever do to you—“

His head droops and for a second he looks like a teenager being scolded, like a kindergartener caught up past bedtime. “I warned her not to spy on my true form,” He steps forward—

Dean steps back. “Oh, so that gives you the right to burn out her freakin’ eyes?”

“She persisted in spite of my warnings. My true form can be… overwhelming to humans. So can my real voice… but you already knew that.”

Dean swallowed nervously and suppressed a shudder; “You mean the gas station and the motel,” He thought back on the destruction, the PAIN in his head; “That was you TALKING?”

The angel nodded.

“Buddy,” Dean gave his head a shake; “Next time lower the volume.”

He looked down, lips pursed, almost ashamed—Dean had seen that expression before and it sent a hot spike through his chest.

“It was my mistake… Certain people—special people—can perceive my true visage… I thought you would be one of them. I was wrong.”

Dean swallowed again, a bitter sour taste crawling up from his stomach; “And what VISSAGE,” He spat the word, “Are you in now, huh? Been plumbing around in my head, cause, I promise you, this won’t make me sympathetic… You picked the wrong face to hide behind if that’s what you’re after.”

For a second he looks confused, his eyes are unfocused just slightly, and Dean can almost see the smoke as the wheels in his head turn. After a moment Castiel’s lips purse, relax and pulls at his tattered overcoat, pats his chest; “This—this is a Vessel—”

It comes as a shock that this guy, this poor stupid guy actually existed somewhere, that maybe maybe—“You’re possessing some poor bastard?“

“He’s a devout man, he actually prayed for this.“

Who in their right mind would PRAY to be something’s meatsuit? “Uh-huh,” He tried to swallow a knot growing in his throat, couldn’t quite manage it and motioned toward Castiel’s midsection nervously; “Yanno, it might have been easier to show up like that the first time instead of all that burning bush crap,” He pauses, thinks, “Well… maybe not easier—“ His eyes steel over the ‘Vessel’ again almost longingly then he shuts down the thoughts when that weird fibrous feeling settles over his mind again, like a fish’s fin under the water touching you while swimming but he can’t shake it; “But it would have saved you some time and broken windows.”

“Finding a human vessel durable enough to contain me, it’s not easy.”

Dean snorted, “I have that same problem with women,” He lets that memory come forward, lets it just speak for itself. All the women… the Sounds he’d made for them— the humiliation.

Castiel’s eyebrows twitched, just slightly and Dean thought, maybe he saw pain flicker across his face, remembered seeing that exact expression before and choked the memories down. Part of him hoped the words stung, even if the only one he was hurting was something his mind had conjured up a long time ago. It felt good, natural to take that first swing, lash out first before he could be hurt again.

Dean exhaled slowly, brushed off the sense of sour guilt that built up behind his ribs and pushed onward; “Look, Pal… I-I’m not—“ Those eyes are looking right at him, intent and familiar and warm in a way those the demon had worn were not. He shudders, has to look away and fight down a pained choking noise before he can speak again, “Who are you, really. No games, no flashing lights… Who are you and what do you want? What is it gonna take for you to leave me alone?”

His brows pull down and he looks almost heartbroken for half a second—Jesus he’s good, he’s got it all down pat, every tilt of his head, every twitch of muscles in his jaw, even the warm, sad sympathy in his eyes. Those damned eyes…

“I told you.”

Dean clicks his tongue; “Right, and why would an Angel, rescue me from Hell?”

He steps closer and Dean has to bite his cheek again to keep from stepping back, to stop himself from flinching and letting this—this THING intimidate him.

“Good things do happen, Dean.”

He can remember the texture of dark hair between his fingers, thick and just a little bit coarse, how soft his lips felt against Dean’s own—how he smelledTASTED. He has no name for it still and part of Dean wants to reach out and just—just touch him, but he can’t let that happen. He can’t. His lips twitch upward, it’s not a smile, not really. There’s nothing happy or fond about it; “Not in my experience.”

He looks like maybe he pities Dean, his face scrunches up in something like disgust and confusion and awe all rolled into one, there is no brushing sensation this time, maybe it never left and this ‘Angel’ saw everything he’d just thought; “What’s the matter?”

His knees shake. He has to get out of here… He—he just has to get out of here now.

And then His expression changes, realization, sadness, shock; “You don’t think you deserve to be saved.”

“Get away from me,” He’s startled by the sound of his own voice, the low inhuman threat of it. Like a dog that’s been kicked too much growling from the corner it’s hid itself in. Pissing scared and hurt and angry enough to bite before the threat of another blow can be offered. But if anything Castiel steps closer, wets his lips like he’s confused, curious, probes a little deeper. Dean can make out every little fleck of color in his iris, every lash and the arch of his brows. Every pinprick of stubble on his jaws and cheeks—the warmth of his skin and the otherworldly smell of him—His skin crawls. The Angel is in his head and he has no idea how to get him out, how to make this… this rape of his inner most thoughts stop. “Why’d you do it? Why me?” _Why not any of those poor souls I had strapped to the rack down there? Why do I deserve to be saved and they don’t?_

He speaks slowly again, like he’s talking to a child, Dean feels small as one in that moment scared and hiding and shitting himself in fear because he just found out the big bad wolf is real.

“Because God commanded it. Because God chose you.”

Dean’s forgotten how to swallow again, forgotten how to breathe, so he just stands there and stares the Angel down, glares and tries to push his own presence forward but it doesn’t work… why should it? He already knows… He knows everything now and there’s no place to hide.

Dean’s naked in the dark and there’s no escape.

“And what if I don’t want to be chosen? What if I chose not to believe?”

Castiel looks atintoTHROUGH him and speaks; “But you will… in time, you will.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's late, I had to work longer than normal. Halloween aproach'eth.


	5. Sunburn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters today guys. I'm going on a business trip and won't be back until probably Wednesday, if I get back before then we'll just call Today somebody's birthday and continue from there. Wish me luck! I get to go shmooze with the literary crowd for three days!
> 
> 0-0-0

0-0-0

 

Sam is scared and pissed when he gets to Bobby’s. He slams the driver’s door of the Impala so hard Dean feels it in his teeth. He snaps, Dean snaps back, Bobby tells them to quiet down, that unlike some people he’s actually trying to get some work done.

Sam stomps into the kitchen and slams things around, makes coffee and plunks down at the table rubbing his eyes. He hasn’t slept, drove all night to get here after he’d discovered his room at the Astoria practically demolished.

Dean says he doesn’t have to explain himself, that it was his decision and Sam can just go fuck himself because it was the right decision. “He woulda’ just knocked you out too or worse. We don’t know what we’re messin’ with here and the last thing we want to do is piss it off!”

“Hell, I don’t know,” Bobby says from his desk, “Mighta done him some good. Best sleep I’ve got since I was a kid.”

Dean threw him a look that said plainly; ‘who asked you’ and turned back to his brother. “The point is, we don’t know what it was and I didn’t want you anywhere near it.”

“I could have helped! I mean, God forbid it had been something else, you could have been killed! You’re not back two days and you’re already throwing yourself in the line of fire like it means nothing!”

“Sam—“

“NO! Dean—this… Haven’t you realized that this doesn’t work? Throwing yourself on the damned grenade doesn’t save anyone, it just hurts you and I’m… I’m tired of it. I can help. I’m not a kid anymore.”

Dean leans close over him and speaks slowly, carefully; “I don’t want you near it. This thing—“ His breath hitches, “This thing’s dangerous and I can’t focus on killing it if I have to worry where you are.”

“Then don’t,” Sam meets his stare; “Just let me help. I’m strong enough to take care of myself—“

Dean’s palms crack against the tabletop so loudly Sam visibly flinches, sees something empty in his brother’s eyes fill with darkness. “You want to help? Help Bobby find out what this thing is… Then, maybe, we’ll talk.”

He leaves, storms upstairs and shuts himself in one of the dusty empty rooms, pulls a chair down off a stack in front of the window and plops it down right in the middle of the floor, sits and presses his hands together between his knees, leans forward until his chin almost meets his thighs and tries to breathe.

He can hear Bobby talking downstairs, can hear Sam’s voice raise in disbelief even as he tries to keep himself quiet.

“An Angel? Like—like an honest to God ANGEL?”

“That’s what he said but Dean don’t believe him.”

And why should he? Chubby cheeked weirdos with fluffy pigeon wings playing harps and flashing their asses at people? Who would believe that shit? And if they did exist—which they didn’t—why hadn’t they stepped in to help? Why weren’t THEY fighting off the demons and the ghosts and all the other nightmare things tearing families apart? Why did he and Sam and all the other hunters have to sacrifice everything to protect people when Angels were flying around singing lullabies to fucking stars?

It wasn’t true. It just—it just couldn’t be true.

If there had been angels watching over him he wouldn’t have gone to hell in the first place, wouldn’t be in this situation now with twisted memories come to life practically choking him to death real slow.

Sam came looking for him about half an hour later, just crept up while Dean had his hands clamped over his ears trying to force the sound of his own screams and the slickwetdisgusting feeling of familiar hands on his skin. He was covered in gooseflesh and sweating when Sam opened the door, didn’t even know his brother was standing there watching him—witnessing this-this display of weakness like it was his right to take away Dean’s security, like he’d been born to chip away at the fraying remains of Dean’s self-control, his very sanity.

It was probably a good thing Sam didn’t touch him because Dean wasn’t one-hundred percent sure at that moment that he wouldn’t have lashed out and beaten his brother to the ground before he realized who he was.

Sam raps his knuckles firmly against the hollow of the door. His expression is guarded, wary, when Dean jerks around to stare at him, stands up so fast his chair tips over.

Sam’s eyes search him, then land somewhere over his left eye. He licks his lips and motions over his shoulder; “Bobby found something.”

Bobby’s still sitting behind his desk, he looks up and holds Dean’s eyes as he comes back into the room, sizes him up like he’s a package of discount steak in the grocery store and Bobby’s wondering if the risk is worth it.

Bobby turns the book he has open as they approach; “I got stacks of lore, Biblical, Pre-Biblical,” He shakes his head and gestures to old tattered rolls of parchment to his right; “Some of it’s in damned Cuneiform.”

Sam glances at his brother how he’s rolled his shoulders forward and is scratching at the mark under his sleeve, his expression is pinched, nervous, perhaps even pensive and he takes a step backward from the desk as if the very images in the book scare him.

It’s an illumination, similar to something one might find in antique bibles. Reproductions of oil paintings or frescos on cathedral walls. A man amid flames with his palms raised, seeking revelation with gilded ‘holy light’ spiking off of him from the point the angel hovering above his head has made contact.

Sam has seen this image before and he rubs the corners of his mouth as he turns back to the text.

“It all says an Angel can snatch a soul from the pit.”

“What else,” Dean nudges the book away from himself as if it’s offended him, won’t even read the inscription opposite the image.

“What else what?” Bobby’s face wrinkles in confusion.

“What else can do it?” Dean meets his eyes evenly, sedately.

“Airlift your ass outta the hotbox?” Bobby is quiet a minute, lips pursed eyes wide in thought, digging around in that supercomputer of a brain of his; “As far as I can tell, nothin’.”

“What about pagan gods or goddesses.”

“Not exactly their Em-Oh, most of ‘em like sacrifices and tormenting souls, not pullin ‘em outta Hell.”

“Yeah, but they can be killed… Does that book of yours say how to kill an angel?” He practically spits the word.

“Why do you want to kill him?” Sam is paging back and forth through the tome; “He got you out of hell, Dean that—that’s like looking a gift horse in the mouth—then punching the guy who gave it to you in the balls.”

Dean shivered, “I don’t want to punch him in the balls, I want to—“

“But, why?”

“Because there’s a catch, Sam. There’s always a catch. He didn’t do it outta the kindness of his heart, he had a reason, he wants something—so I’m gonna get him before he gets me."

“That doesn’t make any sense… Why can’t you just accept that something GOOD happened to you and just—just say ‘thank you’.”

Bobby winced; “He did that already.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, then he stuck ‘im with your Demon killing knife.”

Sam gapes at him; “You stabbed an Angel?”

“He’s not an angel, Sam!”

“But you just said—“

“IT said It was an angel. That don’t mean It is.”

“He waltzed right over the traps—Just think about this for a second! What else could conceivably walk right over salt lines and devil’s traps. All those talismans Bobby put on the walls? It—HE pulled you out of Hell, Dean! This—This is a GOOD thing, a very-very GOOD THING!”

“Well, thank you Martha Stuart. But you’re forgetting one little detail.”

“What?”

“There’s no such thing as Angels, Sam!”

Sam tangled his hands in his hair and looked like he may want to beat his head against the nearest hard surface. Bobby leaned back in his seat and rubbed his forehead like he was getting a headache.

“Well then,” Sam propped his hands on his hips; “Tell me what else it could have been?”

“Well, all I know is I was not… groped by an angel!” He feels vaguely sick to his stomach thinking about it.

“Okay, look, Dean. Why do you think this Castiel would lie to you about it?”

_Because Castiel isn’t REAL! He’s made up! He was in my head and I KNOW he’s not REAL! He can’t be real. He CAN’T BE REAL!_ “Maybe because he’s some kind of DEMON?” He scrubs his hands on the thighs of his jeans trying to rid himself of that oily DIRTY feeling under his skin; “Demons LIE.”

“A demon who is immune to salt rounds? And Devil’s traps? And Ruby’s Knife?”

“He’s got a point, Dean.”

Sam is smiling, it’s smug and Dean’s right hand is already curled into a fist but he’s too busy staring at Bobby in disbelief to smack his brother in the mouth.

Sam makes a gesture like he’s setting a package down in front of his brother. “This is good news.”

He doesn’t lift his head, just stares at the edge of the desk just to the right of the open tome. “How,” He sounds petulant like a child or something.

“Well, for once this isn’t just another round of demon shit!” He looks at Bobby for reaffirmation. Bobby’s gaze is even, just a little sad. “That in itself is a relief. Maybe, you were saved by one of the good guys, yanno?”

Dean speaks quietly and it’s not comforting that he’s suddenly so subdued about this; “Okay, say it’s true. Say, there are angels… Then what, there’s a God?” His nose wrinkled up and he turned to Sam, eyebrows up.

Bobby taps his fingers on the arms of his chair and tilts his head to the side, swings his chair a little; “This point… Vegas money’s on ‘Yeah’.”

Dean chuckles humorlessly and waves like he’s wafting away smoke; “I don’t know, guys,” He turns, shoulders still rolled forward and tangles his fingers in his hair, pulls on it a little just to feel the sting because all he really wants to do right now is scream at them, just—just SAY it so they’ll understand. But then they’ll know, they’ll **know** what that—that THING did to him while wearing Cas’s face and he—he just can’t handle it, can’t handle the look of horror and pity he knows will be in Sam’s eyes. He doesn’t want his little brother to know how much it had HURT to hear that voice whispering so tenderly in his ear;

_‘What kind of man are you? Your perfect life is playing bitch to some weak little blue-eyed cocksucker? What would your daddy think if he saw how you laid down and let him open you up… What would your brother think if he knew your idea of paradise involved taking it up the ass—‘_

“Dean?”

Sam looks worried.

Bobby can see the tension in his brow and around his mouth. Can see how Dean’s hands are popping nervously like he’s a junkie with the shakes, how he just can’t quite seem to meet their eyes. “No… I’m—I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it.”

Sam speaks slowly, picks his words carefully; “Why not?”

Dean blinks, turns to Bobby and swipes his tongue over his lips; “Because. ‘Why me?” He looks at Sam as if the whole thing is preposterous, the expression holds long enough that he meets Bobby’s eyes, then it’s different. Not so much changes, but is no less different. He looks so scared.

Sam doesn’t see that though, he just sees his brother unwilling to accept this gift. Sees stubborn, prickly Dean refusing to believe that good things can happen.

Bobby… Bobby sees something different. He sees a little kid who learned tough lessons too soon. A young man who has very little sense of self-worth but a really handy set of masks that fit oh-so-perfectly over the cracked exterior and balls enough to fake it anyway. Like filler in all your dents, it may look good on the outside, feel smooth under your hand, but it’s all plastic under the paint.

“If there is a God out there why would he give a crap about me?” Dean swallows.

“Dean,” Sam shakes his head but Dean keeps talking, as if he didn’t even hear his brother’ speak.

“I mean, I’ve saved some people, okay? I figure that made up for the… for the stealing and the ditchin’ chicks… But why do I deserve to get saved? Why me, huh? Why—why not somebody else?” _Somebody better._

“Well,” Sam started low and let his voice trail up, trying to plant the idea in Dean’s head subtle like. “Maybe you’re important to The Man Upstairs.”

Bobby watches them quietly for a little bit, tries to pick apart what exactly is going on in Dean’s head at that moment because the kid looks like he wants to run, wants to just jack rabbit out of there so fast he’d make your head spin.

“W-well that creeps me out,” Dean’s breathing is elevated, his hands are still flexing open and closed, kind of like his fingers are numb. He looks a half second away from hyperventilating. “I-I’m nobody special,” He swallows with what looks like tremendous effort, “I… He picked the wrong guy.”

Sam stares at him for a minute unblinking, “What makes you say that? You’re a great guy, Dean. You save people. You’ve saved me countless times… You went to _Hell_ for me, Dean… Why—why would you think you don’t deserve to be saved?”

_Because I don’t… You don’t know what I did down there, Sam. And I hope you never ever do._

Dean takes a slow breath, rubs the bruised flat of his palm against his mouth like he’s trying to hold back nausea. He shifts on his feet and can’t seem to figure out what to do with his hands, winds up crossing them tightly over his chest; “Fine… what do we know about Angels?”

0-0-0

 

Sam forgets the pie.

Frickin’ figures.

Not that Dean’s hungry anymore anyway… They’re pulling out and Bobby’s got a bug up his rear. It’s never a good thing when off duty hunters drop off the grid suddenly. It’s never a good thing when anybody just drops out like that.

Dean supposes it should be funny on some level. The fact the whole place smells like blood when they go in but they don’t recognize it until they’re staring down at Olivia’s mangled corpse.

It’s still fresh, maggots haven’t started in on it yet. Her eyes are only just milking over.

It’s sad looking down at her. Her shirt’s split open and her breasts are hanging out, splattered and smeared with blood, face tilted back jaw unhinged on an eternal scream of agonyHORROR, he’s not as disgusted by the sight of it as he knows he should be, just stands there staring down at the cracked arches of bone and the bloody, bloated goo that used to be her internal organs. Some of her guts are clinging to the walls and bedspread like some kind of macabre art project.

She would have been beautiful in life.

He can’t help but stare at the mess of it all, think it’s weirdly… pretty. How something so vital and alive can be reduced to a sack of water and meat. Something rotting and putrid and… and worthless.

He shivers, rubs a hand over his mouth because NOW he feels sick to his stomach.

Three more houses, all the same.

Bobby puts it almost eloquently; “They’ve all redecorated… in red.”

Shit.

Dean drives until he can’t see straight, starts swaying a little too far over the yellow line. Sam asks if he’s OK, he snaps, says he’s fine but he can’t get it out of his head. Ribs will bend to a surprising degree before they break, he knows that for a fact, has seen too many of them for his liking thank you. Broken and yellow-red, pulled apart to expose the gooey treasures underneath. He’s breathing heavily and swallowing a flood of hot thin spit before he realizes what’s happening, sweat’s trickling down his nape.

“Dean, you alright?”

“Fine.”

“Yeah, sure, you look fine,” Sam watches him for a few more gulps and quick breaths; “Look, man, it’s fine you don’t gotta hold it in like this… We saw some nasty stuff, happens to the best of us… not to mention all I’ve seen you eat today is a few chips—“

“Can we please not talk about food?” He tilts his chin up and gives his head a shake like he’s forcing something worm like to stay down, mutters; “Screw this,” and reaches toward the glove compartment, shuffles around and comes out with a bottle of Dramamine. “Say anything and I’ll kill ya.”

Sam holds up his hands innocently and doesn’t say a word.

Dramamine knocks Dean flat. Sam doesn’t know why, he’s seen his brother throw back three and four pills at a time and still drive all night when he had stomach flu years ago, but now a single dose has Dean slouched in the passenger seat with the window down and the air blowing on his face, out cold in less than twenty minutes.

They aren’t that far from Bobby’s, will be there by dawn at least, but they’re running on fumes so when Sam sees a shitty little gasstation/autoshop still open he pulls over, waits a second after they’ve stopped for Dean to wake up and finds it strangely amusing when he sleeps right through the engine shutting off, the door opening and Sam propping the nozzle in the tank.  Sam pays for the gas and a cup of sludge being passed off as coffee and slips into the bathroom to splash water on his face and hopefully wake himself up a little more, chase back some of that lingering nausea from seeing the insides of so many fresh bodies today.

He isn’t sure how Dean wakes up in time to fight Henrikson off. Doesn’t know how a ghost can throw him around worse than any corporeal being has in months, but there’s Dean, wide eyed, pale and toting a shotgun.

Dumb luck, that’s all, has to be… Then again maybe it was more.

“Dammit, Bobby. Pick up!”

Dean’s voice is like a railroad spike, drives right through Sam’s head with enough force he feels like he can taste the sound of it. Like pickles and Dial soap… But maybe that’s just residue from getting his head smashed repeatedly against a nasty gas station sink, he’s not sure at the moment.

Dean hits re-dial and glances over at his brother. “How you feeling, huh?”

Sam sighs and tries not to look at the headlights of other cars passing them so the light doesn’t split and prism shatter against his brains.

“How many fingers am I holdin’ up?”

“None… I’ll be fine, Dean.”

He lets his breath out in agitation, listens to the phone click over to Bobby’s machine and dials again; “Henriksen?”

“Yup.”

“Why? What’d he want?”

“Revenge, ‘cause we got him killed,” What did any vengeful spirit want? Really, had Dean forgotten the basics?

“Sam—“

“Well, we did, Dean,” They’d got the man killed, as well as everyone else in that building. Even that sweet secretary girl who’d been so brave and helpful—had offered to sacrifice herself to save them. Sam leaned his head against the window and fisted his hands in his lap.

“Alright,” Dean tossed his phone onto the seat beside him and meets Sam’s gaze evenly—coldly—“Stop right there. Whatever the hell is going in it’s happening to us now. I can’t get hold of Bobby. So if you’re not thinkin’ answers, don’t think at all.”

Sam breathes in, winces when another car decides not to flip on the low beams and looks away when Dean snarls and turns on their spotlight, shines it right at the guy’s windshield.

“There! Ain’t so nice is it, asshole!”

“Calm down—“

“I am calm! This is calm! Look it up in the dictionary you’ll find a picture of me! Calm is my middle fucking name!” A vein twitched in his temple and Sam decided it would be better for both of them if he just shut up and hoped his brother didn’t get them killed.

“I thought your middle name was Paul?”

“SAM!”

“Jesus, you’re loud.”

They drive nonstop straight to Sioux Falls, made it almost an hour and half faster than Sam had thought they would, came through the front door with guns ready, hissing under their breath and hoping they didn’t find the older hunter’s mangled corpse.

The place smelled the same, no blood, just books and booze and motor oil mixed with the scent of any man who lived alone in a space too big.

Bobby wasn’t in the house.

Dean motions his brother outside and he takes the second level, keeps his steps as light as he can so fewer of them creak. He can’t smell blood, which he’s hoping is a good thing… or Bobby’s just ripped apart in a closed room and the smell hasn’t reached him yet.

Yeah, way to be optimistic.

Doors slamming on their own isn’t something anybody wants to see, especially when the one at the end of the hall deliberately pulls itself open, like an invitation.

“Yeah, that’s not creepy at all…” He exhales and starts forward, gun raised.

He hits the cold spot about halfway down the hallway, sees his breath go white in the air and his hackles raise. Isn’t really surprised the thing would manifest behind him, but then again, he was dumb enough to fall for the old ‘Shining’ trick anyway.

“Well, well well… Look who it is, fresh and smoking—“

He doesn’t recognize her at first, she’s cute, innocent looking, just a kid really… It’s her voice, her eyes that set it off and the cold ratchets up his spine like someone playing the xylophone. Shit…  He keeps the gun up, ready, but she advances slowly smiling so genuinely it’s painful.

“What… You don’t remember me? I’m hurt!” She bites her lip, like she’s shy or something; “Meg Masters… Nice to finally talk to you when I’m not—yanno, choking on my own blood.”

Dean’s teeth pop he grinds them so tightly and he keeps his gun trained on her, even if she doesn’t seem aggressive yet, just seems to like the sound of her own voice. She steps forward, he retreats, aimed and ready, chin up. “What do you want?”

“I’m not a demon you know—“

He still takes a step back from her as she advances.

She seems amused, “It’s OK, seriously… I’m just a college girl—Sorry, _was,”_ The lights on the walls flicker as she steps closer, lifts a hand to trail along the wall and peels up a curl of paint under her fingertip. “I was walking home one night and got jumped by all this smoke,” She rolls her tongue in her mouth like she’s gnawing on a jaw breaker or something, looks him up and down like she wants to just take a bite out of him. “Next thing you know I’m a prisoner… in here,” She touches her temple. “You know, I was awake. I had to watch while she murdered people.”

Dean clenches his teeth, focuses on breathing.

She’s close now, too close for comfort but he… he does feel sorry for her in some weird way. He’d only done what he’d thought was right at the time… She’d been a demon, nothing more. He hadn’t even considered who was inside there with the demon, who was trapped and screaming until he’d felt it himself. He’d just wanted to stop it.

“We thought-“

“No! You didn’t think!”

The lights fizz and pop and grow impossibly bright as her temper flares. Her rage changes her, paints dark circles under her eyes and pulls her skin taut on her features. Changes her from some cute girl-next-door into a revenge obsessed ghost.

“I kept waiting—PRAYING! I was trapped in there SCREAMING at you ‘just, help me! PLEASE!’” For a second, when their eyes connect, Dean can almost hear her screaming in some empty blackness for help— Can hear himself begging for his brother and finding no mercy in the faces that surrounded him.

“You’re supposed to help people, Dean. Why didn’t you help me?” She seems to melt, color returns to her and she just looks like a kid again, any college girl he may have passed a hundred times while on a case. Some ordinary girl with ordinary hopes and dreams… now nothing but a ghost.

“I’m sorry—“

“You’re SORRY!” There’s nothing human looking about her now, all pale bloodless flesh and dilated pupils, bloody clothing and fingers sharpened into claws by fury.

The blow takes him by surprise, knocks him back onto the floor and his head rings with it—Damn what a punch. She probably took karate as a kid or something. He says her name, tries to placate her, bring her back from this mindlessness but instead she kicks him in the throat, he flies back choking and thinks; Yep, she played soccer too, because he’s seen Sam kick like that on occasion, got to use the top of the foot to get those nice distance shots.

His gun skided back down the hallway, out of his reach, vaguely he can hear Sam shouting from outside, it sounds distant and he wonders if maybe his brother’s found Bobby alive or not.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be ridden for MONTHS by pure evil while your family has no idea what happened to you?”

He meets her eyes, sees how her pupil and iris have blurred, twitch and shiver with barely controlled anger, the lights are flickering again, buzzing dangerously like a hive of bees.

He feels the words on the end of his tongue, feels them sitting there hot and burning heavy, they taste vile, like rot and sulfur and agony without the sweet relief of death. _You have no idea sister… You have no idea._ He swallows it down—chokes it back into the soured depths of his stomach, it’ll bubble up later but right now he can’t afford to be weak; “We did the best we could—“

She slams him back into the floor hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs and leave him lying there wheezing trying to re-inflate his lungs.

It’s the mark on Meg’s hand that did it, told him something isn’t exactly kosher with this whole vengeful spirit deal. She’s too powerful, throws him around like she’s corporeal, cracks his ribs like she’s corporeal, aims a shot at his nuts like she’s corporeal and he drags himself into the far room gasping for aching breath. It’s not as easy as he wants to think it is, to get her angry and coaxed into the right position and if he wants to get technical about it the shot kind of sucks as well and he’s lucky it worked at all. He promises himself, once he can breathe again, he’s going to ask Bobby to please, please hang up more iron chandeliers and sconces and awesome industrial things like that, Maybe even bags of salt above every door. Maybe even a sprinkler system of holy water, yeah that’d be awesome.

It’s possible that the only good thing that comes out of the whole ordeal is Bobby’s panic room. Dean seems pretty keen on staying in there, Sam is too actually, wishes maybe he could build a whole house like this. Wishes every house was built like this.

“See?” Dean’s packing shells with gunpowder and cardboard wadding and Sam’s filling them with rock salt. “This is why I can’t get behind ‘God’.”

Sam looks at him with his eyebrows raised; “What’re you talkin’ about?”

“If he doesn’t exist, fine,” He waves his hands in a sweeping, almost wing like motion; “Bad crap happens to good people, that’s how it is. No rhyme or reason, just random—horrible evil. I get it, Okay? I can roll with that,” He points at Sam with his funnel; “But if he is out there? What’s wrong with him? Where the hell is he while these decent people are getting torn to shreds?” He stabs particularly hard at the wadding in a few shells. “How does he live with himself, yanno? Why doesn’t he… why doesn’t he help?” He tosses a shell against the wall and leans back in his seat, twirls the funnel around and contemplates throwing that as well. Contemplates how hard he would have to stab it into his thigh before he met bone.

Sam compresses another shell and gives Bobby an emphatic look, asks with the lift of his brows and the wideness of his eyes just what he’s supposed to say to that. Scrapes his tongue on his teeth nervously and wipes some sweat off his upper lip.

Bobby snorts; “I ain’t touchin’ this one with a ten foot pole!” and hunches his shoulders over his book again.

Dean leans forward and starts packing again, mutters; “Yeah,” under his breath like he isn’t surprised, like he knew the answer all along.

They continue in silence for a while longer, just the repetitive pecking of Dean packing in wadding over the gunpowder and Sam filling the cartridges.

Bobby turns another page, taps his pencil against it and calls out; “Found it.”

“What?” Sam stops mid-count and turns his head.

Dean looks up, but much less enthusiastically.

“The symbol you saw. The brand on the ghosts.”

“Yeah?”

“Mark of the Witness.”

Sam’s nose wrinkled up; “Witness?”

Dean points the sharp end of the funnel at Bobby; “Hey, I think I saw that movie… Harrison Ford? The Amish lady? Now she had some nice boobs—”

Bobby rolls his eyes.

Sam speaks up, “Witness to what?”

“The unnatural. None of ‘em died what you’d call ordinary deaths.”

Sam gives his brother a smug look and Dean just scowls at him.

Bobby continues unimpeded; “See, these ghosts, they were forced to rise. They woke up in agony. They’re like… rabid dogs. It ain’t their fault. Someone rose ‘em on purpose.”

“Who?”

Bobby turned his palms upward and wrinkled his nose; “Do I look like I know?” He sighs, “But whoever it was, used a spell so powerful it left a mark. A brand on their souls.”

Dean meets his brother’s eyes. They both know what kind of power it would take to do something like that.

“Do you think… Do you think He could have done it?”

“He?”

“The… the-uh- angel. Do you think he could have done this?”

Bobby gives him a startled look, almost as if Dean has sprouted a second head.

“Dean, why would an angel do this? It is highly unlikely—I’d venture to say ‘Entirely Unlikely’ that an angel did this,” Sam shakes his head in disbelief.

Dean crosses his arms and looks away.

Bobby tapped the page with his pencil and watched as Sam stood and shuffled over stretching a cramp out of his back; “It’s called the Rising of the Witnesses. It figures into an ancient prophecy.”

“What book is it from?” Sam looks down at the symbols drawn in the margins of the book Bobby has open before them, then glances over his shoulder where Dean is still seated absently poking at the wadding in another shell and looking up every so often with a guarded expression on his face.

Bobby leans back in his seat, twirls his pencil around a few times and scratches at an itch in his beard; “The widely distributed version’s just for tourists, you know. But, uh—long story short… Revelations.”

The look that the brothers give him, in Bobby’s mind is identical, even if it’s presented differently. Dean’s chin goes up, Sam’s head falls to the side a little, but they’re both confused and slightly nauseated. “This is a sign, boys.”

“A sign of what?” Sam leans his hip against the edge of the desk.

Bobby sags back in his chair, feels more tired in that moment than he has in the last thirty years, cold and sick to his stomach because part of him hadn’t really considered the fact that he’d live to see something like it. Nobody really does until it’s knocking on your front door apparently, grinning like a possum and shouting ‘SURPRISE!’ at you. Only instead of confetti it’s raining body parts;

“The Apocalypse.”

 

0-0-0


	6. Admittance of Guilt

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There’s a horrible mess to clean up afterward. Bobby pushes a broom and dustpan into Dean’s hands while he and Sam sort through all the papers and books displaced in the fray.

It takes the better part of the night. Bobby keeps the swept-up salt in an old coffee can, says he’ll sift out the dirt and reuse it—Waste not and all that crap.

Dean aches in places normal humans don’t know they have and he’s pretty sure he’s bunged up his brand new body after only three days because when he and Sam finally collapse—Sam across the sofa, Dean on a pile of cushions and musty smelling old army surplus blankets under his sleeping bag in the floor—his right shoulder hurts like a bitch and his knees ache like they used to. It doesn’t take as long to go to sleep as he was afraid it would. He’d talked Bobby out of a few shots of his whiskey hoping to ward off the dreams.

It doesn’t work exactly.

Greasy bony clawed hands creep over his arms and legs, grip and scratch and pull him open and… He’s shivering when his eyes open, thinks maybe he left a window open because he can hear curtains flapping in the breeze.

He lifts his head and looks around the den, none of the windows are open, nothing’s moving, but when he glances into the kitchen there’s a shadow—a human shape leaning back against the sink, head down.

It’s a familiar shape, familiar lines… Some part of Dean tells him he should be pissing himself in fear right about now, but something… something’s different.

He glances over at his brother, notices Sam is still, there are bruises on his arms, but he’s resting peacefully, quietly, breath deep and even. Relaxed in a way he hasn’t seen Sam relax in years. He turns his head slowly back to the kitchen and the figure at the sink is still there.

Castiel is still standing there.

Dean climbs slowly to his feet, curls his toes into the fabric of his socks against the cold flooring and shuffles forward cautiously, pulls the sleeves of his shirt down over his arms because he feels weirdly chilled and exposed.

Castiel looks different… frayed maybe. Tired, “Excellent job with the witnesses.”

Dean swallows and keeps his distance; “You knew?”

“I was… uh—made aware,” His fingers flex against the countertop, tap out a rhythm and still.

“Well, thanks a lot for the angelic assistance! You know I almost got my heart ripped out of my chest!” He prods the spot with a rigid finger, the skin is still very tender and bruised and he feels like throwing something.

“But you didn’t,” He says it like Dad always used to say ‘Don’t be stupid’ and Dean grits his teeth, can’t breathe for a second.

A ‘Good Thing’ Sam had said. This is a good thing… All the good Dean sees before him is that he was right. There was a catch. This—this angel had pulled him out of hell, but he wanted something in return for it. “I thought angels were supposed to be guardians. Fluffy wings, halos… you know, Michael Landon… Not dicks.”

Castiel is grinning at him. It’s dark, but Dean can see how it pulls at the corners of his mouth, cuts black shadows across the familiar planes of his face. He doesn’t like it… Makes his blue eyes look like they may snap to black at any second and Dean’s skin crawls.

“Read the Bible. Angels are warriors of God. I’m a soldier.”

“Yeah?” Dean feels himself shaking, wants to reach out and—and HURT something; “Then why didn’t you fight? Why didn’t you help us!”

“I’m not here to perch on your shoulder,” He narrows his eyes and the expression is ten shades of cold. “We had larger concerns.”

“Concerns?” He scoffs, has to look away before he can continue because that shaking in his chest is working out into the rest of his body and he feels weak and stupid and patheticdirtyBROKEN because he can’t stop it. “There were people getting torn to shreds down here!” The images pop into his head, the smell of blood and feces and urine spilled in fright… Bile eating away at soft tissues and Dean’s hands tighten into fists, he bites his own tongue hard to keep from gagging because the smells and sights he’s remembering now didn’t happen on earth.  He manages to choke it down but the words don’t stop, they flow up and out and taste bitter all the way; “Why didn’t you stop it? Why didn’t you at least HELP? What were you doing? Got your heads too far up your skirts to see what’s happening around you? And by the way, while all this is going on, where the hell is your boss, huh? If there is a God.”

Castiel says it in a low, deep voice that rattles something in Dean’s chest; “There’s a God.”

“I’m not convinced.”

Castiel breathes in and out, his chin falls to his chest and his shoulders sag, like he can’t comprehend why Dean doubts.

“Because if there’s a God,” Dean swallows, feels tension threatening to make his voice crack; “What the hell is he waiting for? Huh? Genocide? Monsters roaming the earth? The fucking Apocalypse? At what point does he lift a damn finger and help the poor bastards that are stuck down here! They don’t deserve this—They haven’t done ANYTHING to deserve this—”

Castiel is rocking slightly, as if the words coming from Dean’s mouth cause him pain. Like he’s some little boy trying to hold back a panic attack; “The Lord works—“

Dean steps close, growls the words and means them, pushes his intent forward in his thoughts and knows when Castiel looks up at him with his eyes slightly widened that yes, the little bastard was looking into his head again. “If you say ‘mysterious ways’, so help me, I will kick your ass.”

He lets out a breath, lifts his hands because he knows futility when he sees it and turns his attention elsewhere in the kitchen while he regroups.

Dean stands there squeezing his fists and trembling with barely concealed rage and fear at being so close—so close. His hand is uncurled and lifting before he even knows what he’s doing, fingers shaking and he’s within two inches of touching, remembers the heat of skin and the warmth in that fragile little smile— He blinks, shakes his head and takes a step backward, heart beating in his throat… Not real. He can’t be real and yet he’s standing there not three feet away.

It’s a whirlwind in Dean’s head, questions and memories that really have no business existing at the same time all jumbled up and then those eyes meet his and he knows he’s been heard, doesn’t know how to shut it off, how to shut himself up so he takes another step back, swallows nervously and rubs his palms on his jeans.

Castiel looks at him and for a minute he just looks like a guy, THE GUY from Dean’s memories with his head shifted just a little to the side and Dean feels like absolute shit for snapping, for pushing.

Castiel speaks first, looks down at himself—his vessel—“I make you uncomfortable…”

He swallows with a measure of difficulty; “You could say that.”

“Why?”

His jaws clamp shut, teeth ground together so tightly they pop. He can’t stop himself from thinking it, somewhere deep in his head, but he doesn’t say anything.

Castiel narrows his eyes again and the sensation of fog whispering over Dean’s mind returns. Maybe it only feels like that when he’s searching for something specific. He clamps down on the memories, hides them under others, like a kid hiding porn from his mother.

“Can’t—can’t you find a—a different vessel?”

Castiel’s lips compress and for a second there’s something else in his eyes, something maybe a little frantic but it’s quashed quickly and the angel’s shoulders shift like he’s shaking off snow. “That’s unnecessary.”

Dean wants to argue, it’s on the tip of his tongue. Part of him wants to say fuck yes its necessary, simply because Castiel looking… looking like that, sounding like that… hurts a littleALOT, makes Hell seem like it’s just on the other side of his eyelids. But at the same time… He… He just wants to touch him and make sure he’s real because he… he wants him to be real so very much, wants to let those arms encircle him and that voice whisper that it’s over, the pain is over and everything will be OK now.

Castiel speaks quickly, precisely about the Witnesses, Lilith, the sixty-six seals.

Dean listens, doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want this to be real, but now that it is he has to find a way to stop it because it’s obvious nobody else is going to. He inches closer slowly, masks it as pacing back and forth in the length of the room until he finds himself leaned against the counter a little more than an arm’s length away and wanting… wanting to be closer but he—he just can’t.

Castiel explains about the seals, locks on a door and Dean’s blood runs cold.

“Lucifer?”

A nod.

“I thought Lucifer was just a story they told at demon Sunday School,” His heart was beating quicker and quicker, “There’s no such thing.”

The angel looks like he pities him again, or envies his ignorance; “Three days ago, you thought there was no such thing as me… You thought I was impersonating a fantasy you created while a gluttonous djinn waited to feed on you.”

Dean’s teeth click and he feels about two inches tall, wants to lash out again but stops himself.

“Why do you think we’re here, walking among you now for the first time in two-thousand years?”

He doesn’t answer right away, swallows the sour taste of bile back where it belongs. “To stop Lucifer.”

He grins again, it’s impossibly cold, there’s no light in his eyes; “That’s why we’ve arrived.”

“Why are you here?”

“I told you—“

“No… You. Why are YOU _here?_ Why… Why do I know your name? Why do I know your _face?_ How—“ He swallows past the tightness of his throat; “How long have you been following me?”

Castiel’s eyes narrow and become distant, maybe he’s probing Dean’s mind again, maybe it just takes some monumental angelic effort to think; “I saw you for the first time four days ago… Your soul—you were surrounded… but I threw them down and pulled you free.”

Dean’s heart is in his throat. “You kicked their asses?”

He looks confused; “I smote the demons who held you and ra—“

He smiles. It—it feels strange on his face. The pull of muscles is entirely involuntary and he kind of wants to cry but at the same time it hurts it feels wonderful. “Six ways of Sunday…”

“I don’t understand.”

Dean shakes his head, rubs a hand over his eyes, “Forget it…”

“I am not a fantasy, Dean. The lie your mind constructed while you were under the djinn’s control is meaningless. I don’t know why or how your subconscious drew forth my name and the face of this vessel but it is insignificant in the wake of what is coming. You must understand what is happening and what must be done to stop it. Everything else is irrelevant.”

Dean feels that little bubble of comfort growing in his chest pop, just—evaporate. Insignificant? Meaningless? Hell may have twisted those memories, may have darkened them to the point that Dean can barely stand to be in Castiel’s presence now that he knows he does, in fact, exist. But to him, it was real. It had felt real and what he had felt for Castiel, what he had seen in those pictures WAS REAL and he wanted it… he wanted it so badly.

But those blue eyes are cold and inhuman. Dean wants to see something, anything in those eyes, some flicker of reaction, not this… emptiness shrouded in power he can feel against his skin like static electricity; “Well, bang-up job so far. Stellar work with the Witnesses. It’s nice to know how hard you’re working at keeping humanity safe. I bet your boss is so proud he could just shit himself.”

Castiel’s jaw works, his tongue traces the points of his teeth; “We tried—”

“Not hard enough,” Dean looks at him, watches feels a pressure growing in his chest like something’s trying to wedge itself in there and hollow him out. Like the air before a lightning strike.

“Don’t test me.”

“Oh, but I wanna… I really, really wanna.”

Wind blows outside and there’s a sound like thunder, Dean feels the little hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. He scoffs, thinks that this whole idea is pathetic, that if this is what angels really are he’s not sure what all the hype is about. Thinks maybe if they tried harder almost thirty hunters wouldn’t be dead. If Angels had done their jobs and stopped this he wouldn’t have had to step in and do it for them. He wouldn’t have had to see people ripped open in a fashion that would have made Al—

“Our numbers are not unlimited,” The angel steps closer so close Dean can feel the exquisite heat coming off his body, smell that… whatever it is, warm and heady and familiar in a way it has no right to be. The wind lashes the windows, screams through the cracks and buffets the curtains like it’s trying to get in—trying to get HIM; “Six of my brothers died in the field this week. You think the armies of heaven should just follow you around? There’s a bigger picture here.”

Dean feels like he’s pressed hard into the ground, trapped and unable to move, can’t look—CAN’T LOOK—because he knows if he does Castiel’s eyes will be black and there will be a kind, warm little smile on his face as his hand pushes in and in and inandinininin.

“You should show me some respect,” He leans in close, his breath is warm and he smells like heat and light and righteousness in that it is both burning and cold and inhuman, nothing like the Cas in his memories; “I dragged you out of hell… I can throw you back in.”

Dean can’t remember how to breathe, shrinks against the cabinets and tries to shove himself into the dusty cracks between them. He looks— _nodon’tdoitpleasedon’tlook_ — but the angel is gone and everything is quiet.

Dean wakes in a cold sweat lying tangled in his coat and the blankets he’d been laying on in the floor. He’s shaking and nauseous and his fingers have curled so tightly into his palms his nails left bloody crescents in the skin. He turns his head, expecting the angel to be standing there again but it’s just Sam coming back from getting a drink or going to the bathroom or something. He kicks Dean’s pillow away playfully, drops down on the sofa and pulls his over shirt back on.

He frowns when he notices the blood on Dean’s palms and that his brother is hunched over his knees and visibly shaking. “Hey… What happened?”

He swallows, snuffs back something wet building in his sinuses; “So… you got no problem believing in God and angels?” His voice sounds rough, like he’s been clawing at the back of his throat again. His head feels funny, his insides thin and empty. He still won’t quite meet Sam’s eyes, is afraid to look up and let Sam see what’s boiling under the surface.

Sam’s working on the buttons of his shirt, shakes his head, brushes his hair out of his eyes, “No, not really.”

Dean’s heart won’t slow down and that soured feeling in his stomach has turned to something worse, a hard sharp lacerating pain that works its way deeper and he’s almost convinced he’s got a knife in his gut. “So, I guess that means you believe in the devil?”

Sam’s mouth twitches nervously; “Why are you askin’ me all this?”

Dean feels the words on his tongue, wants to spit them out because they’re burning away at his insides, but all he can manage is a wan little choking sound that devolves into a cough, a bowed head and a quick lie; “Nothin… I—I need some air.”

“I’ll come with y—“

“No,” He pushes himself up, shoves his feet into his shoes and bangs out the door without a backward glance.

Sam goes after him anyway but when he gets into the yard he can’t see Dean anywhere. His footprints are lost in the dust and it’s almost like he’s just vanished. For a moment he thinks maybe Dean’s gone, that the last four days were an illusion and he cups his hands to his mouth, preparing to shout his brother’s name when he hears it, breaking glass. Rattling, more breaking glass.

Dean is about four or five rows in by an almost artistic stack of Oldsmobiles partly crushed or smashed apart in various car accidents over the years. Dean’s picking up rocks and throwing them as hard as he can into the cracked windows. He seems mindless but purposefully destructive… He’s pitching. Not too very good at it, but he throws hard and fast. Sometimes he throws too late or too early and the rock doesn’t go where he wants it to. He’s growling through his teeth, angry and wild and Sam’s a little afraid of him, hangs back where he can’t be seen and just watches.

There’s almost something artistic about it, focused while at the same time unwieldy, chaotic.  

The wind shifts and he can hear his brother’s voice now, it’s still quiet and he’s only making out about every third word or so, but there are words.

“Stupid… if this was… why… at all?—put me back? Well then put me back… hurt less…” He walks over to the stack of cars draws his leg back and kicks as hard as he can—dents the rear quarter panel of the bottom car, snarls indignantly and hops back when his boot slides off, drops onto his butt in the dirt gripping his foot with both hands, growling at his own stupidity.  

His face is flushed and his eyes are bloodshot, wet and streaming, he scrubs the length of his forearm over them and gives his foot another squeeze. He’s probably broken a toe or something, but it doesn’t look like he cares. Looks like he wants it to hurt just that little bit more—

Sam backs away slowly, doesn’t let on that he saw but he’s not sure he’ll ever forget it.

Dean doesn’t eat breakfast. He pulls the Impala into one of Bobby’s work bays and pops the hood. Loses himself in the carburetor and gaskets and measuring fluids, turns the radio up loud, so loud he pretends not to notice Sam coming to check on him, shouting his name from three feet away. Completely ignores him when he turns around and reaches for a rag to wipe grease off his bruised and blistered hands.

He doesn’t eat lunch, scours through the junkyard looking for parts for an old C-10 he’s discovered under a tarp close to the Oldsmobiles he was abusing earlier. Decides maybe he could fix it up, his hands are shaking and his eyes feel full of grit. He has to hold things close to his face to see them clearly. Comes in after three with his knuckles raw and his blisters popped, scrubs his hands clean and wraps bandages around the worst ones because Bobby warned him about the infection he’d got years ago from messing around in all that junk with a cut on his finger. Asks maybe if they should go into town and get him a tetanus shot just in case. Dean showcases the beige strips wrapped around every finger, sometimes every joint, grins almost like he means it and goes back to work without a word.

Sam catches him in the bathroom on his knees in front of the toilet two hours before dinner, has to support his weight when his knees give out halfway down the stairs and his eyes roll up like window shades.

His lips are pale and his skin is hot and dry. He just hangs there over Sam’s shoulder as he moves him down the rest of the stairs into the library, eases him onto the couch and elevates his feet while he yanks open a window and shouts out for Bobby to ‘come quick something’s wrong with Dean.’

He’s thrashing by the time Bobby makes it in, his eyes are rolling dizzily, unfocused and he’s fighting with Sam, he’s got more strength in him that seems possible considering he’s only half conscious. He snarls and threatens them, the words slurred so badly it’s impossible to understand him and he’s got flecks of spit foamed in the corners of his mouth.

Bobby initially thinks he’s having a seizure of some sort, tells Sam to roll him onto his side and let it happen, but when he realizes the thrashing is purposeful, that it’s not a seizure he hefts Dean’s upper half off the sofa and plants himself behind him, pins his arms as best as he can, meets Sam’s eyes and demands holy water. Now.

Dean chokes on it, coughs and turns his head away, but it’s not bubbling, it’s not burning, he’s just too out of his head to realize they’re trying to help.

It’s the fact he’s too warm and not sweating that tells Sam what’s wrong, “He’s dehydrated… Has he eaten at all today?”

“I didn’t see him… He was workin’ on that truck for a while, then he disappeared.”

Sam shakes his head; “I was in here all day, he didn’t go into the kitchen.”

Bobby sighs guiltily, “Didn’t eat yesterday either.”

“No—NO, no, please don’t—“ He snaps at their hands with his teeth, kicks until Sam has to sit on his feet to keep him still while he tries to get water into him. Dean turns his head away and arches his back hard away from Bobby, tries to pull himself free with a drawn out groan of effort through clenched teeth.

Bobby grinds his own teeth, holds on even more tightly, growls into Dean's nearest ear; “Son, it’s alright. We got you, you just lie still.”

But that doesn’t help, actually seems to make it worse and finally Bobby stops talking at all, has to worm himself away from the flailing limbs and scratching fingers without getting hit, watches as Dean continues to press his shoulders back against the couch cushion and dig his head against the armrest. Cries out in a rasp for help and releases a few dry, hopeless sobs. After a while he goes still lies there with his chest heaving and half his body hanging off the couch. He seems spent but they’re not taking any chances, he could be faking.

Sam’s sitting in the floor a few feet away with his legs jackknifed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. His face is wet and his eyes look so hollow. It—it ain’t right. It just ain’t right but there’s nothing Bobby can do about it but wait. Either Dean will wake up or he’ll get bad enough that he can’t fight them anymore and they’ll finally get some water in him one way or another. Worst comes to worst Bobby knows how to find a vein and he’s got some stick-kits in his first aid box under the sink and a couple bags of saline he stole from the last hospital he played CDC in. Sam’s got a badge, he can get more if they need it.

After the thrashing Dean’s only truly OUT for about five minutes, but they’re the longest five minutes Sam’s felt in a while.

The only indication he gives that he’s waking up is to turn his head away from them into the back of the couch, like he’s trying to block out the light around him and lets out a muffled noise kind of like when his voice had been all sharp sudden edges at age fourteen.

Sam takes a slow breath and exhales, calls out; “Dean, can you hear me?” in a soft voice.

He grunts quietly.

“Your head hurt?”

“Hmmm.”

“You’re dehydrated, you gotta drink somethin’.”

He grunts again, that seems to be the extent of his communication abilities at the moment.

“You’re sick and you need to drink something.”

Bobby goes into the kitchen, comes back with a glass with ice cubes floating in it and half a package of saltine crackers. “This whole not eating business is gonna stop now. I don’t care if you’re ‘not hungry’ if me or Sam’s eatin’ so are you, got it?”

Dean nods, doesn’t move his face out of the cushion until Sam pulls him up with one hand under his head and the other around his shoulders and Bobby’s pushing the water glass between his shaking hands and holding up crackers one by one in front of his face until he takes them and presses their corners between his lips.

He doesn’t feel any better, feels like shit for letting them down by not taking care of himself, feels like shit for letting something as stupid and insignificant as a fantasy do THIS to him. The Cas in his head isn’t real, never was. He knows that, has known it since he woke up hanging there with Sam shaking him and slapping at his cheeks. He KNOWS, but some blind—STUPID, childish part of him had hoped. Had hoped with everything he had… Well, now he knows better.

He doesn’t know why or how he conjured up the angel’s name and the face of his ‘vessel’ a full sixteen months before he met him or even really believed they existed. It doesn’t really matter right now. It was senseless, pointless, _meaningless,_ because the fact of the matter is—the reality of it is that Castiel is just like the angels he’s seen in graveyards. Cold as stone, heartless—soulless. Inhuman. He will never be what Dean wants him to be, he will never look at him like the Cas in his head did—never bend close while Dean is pretending to sleep and whisper words of love, or refuse to be left behind, tossed aside or disregarded because Dean is insecure. If anything he’s closer to that twistedsickwrong THING he’d been occasionally subjected to… The Thing with a face and voice like Cas but the wrong color in his eyes.

Dean is just a pawn in this great cosmic chess game and as soon as he’s outlived his usefulness it’s right back to the pit. He’s sure of that.

The water tastes bitter and the crackers coat his mouth like ash but he chokes them down anyway because that’s what’s expected of him. Because he can’t stand to see those afraidworried looks on Sam and Bobby’s faces again. Can’t stand how close they are to asking what he really remembers from Hell, because it would be obvious to anyone now that he’s lied, that something is wrongbrokenbleedingRAW inside him. He has to push it down, has to man up and move on because it’s not going to fade, not going to get any easier. But he can’t let Sam down, not again. He can’t leave him alone and go cry in the fucking corner because he feels so… so hollow. He can’t do that, because it puts the people around him at risk. So he opens his mouth, chews, takes another drink, swallows and repeats. He looks up and mutters a _thank-you_ , doesn’t exactly meet Bobby’s eyes and chokes it all down.

This is it, the pathway to the end of the world and Dean can’t afford to be the weak link in their only defense against it. They can’t afford it. It’s a daunting task, protecting the world, so Dean cuts it down to size. Swallows and puts another square in his mouth. He needs to protect his brother, needs to keep him safe from what’s to come, nothing is more important than that.

Nothing.

 

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	7. Face Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for being so patient with me. I had a lot of fun on the trip and got to meet a lot of interesting people. Anywho, here's the next chapter, I'll probably be posting another tomorrow evening if everything goes OK, I had a lot of time to write in the car.

0-0-0

Sam turns down a hunt. 

Dean’s sitting at the kitchen table and some of the books and papers are shoved back enough to accommodate a bowl and a glass of orange juice. There’s oatmeal in the bowl, supposed to be apple cinnamon, it looks like half cooked brains. Dean doesn’t want to eat it. Looking at it makes him sick. He listens while Sam’s in the other room pacing back and forth. Something about a poltergeist or the great grandmother come for the _bar mitzvah._ Anyway, little George’s stepmother got thrown down the stairs and dragged back up them by her hair. Twice.

Sam winds up electing Edith and Eddy for the job, since they’re closer and over the past year have learned how to handle some of the larger things that go bump or in this case _cackle,_ in the night.

Dean plays with the brain matter in his bowl for a while longer, then pushes it back and tries to escape. 

Sam corners him with toast before he’s even got to his shoes. He eats it because Sam won’t leave him alone otherwise, but winds up hacking it back up twenty minutes later behind the garage and burying it so Sam won’t find out. 

Bobby plies him with a bag of potato chips when he comes back from the store. Drops them on Dean’s stomach where he’s sticking out from under the C-10 says its lunch time and sits there on an overturned bucket gnawing slowly on a bologna sandwich and watching with unblinking eyes. 

Dean thinks it’s dumb but sits there on his creeper with his elbows on his knees and dirt on his fingers pushing potato chips between his teeth. Bobby eats slowly, too slowly, deliberate, small, infantile bites because he knows Dean will take him literally _‘if me or Sam’s eatin’ so are you’_ because he can be an obstinate prick sometimes. Bobby finishes his sandwich about ten minutes after Dean’s polished off half the bag of chips and a bottle of water. Bobby takes the bag and leaves Dean to roll back under the truck and finish what he’s doing. 

It’s difficult. More than difficult. That first week sometimes it’s impossible and the weight of their eyes brings everything he’s choked down back up. It’s like performance anxiety. The same reason he can’t squat in the bushes even if he has to go so bad it hurts or in doctor’s offices when they ask for urine samples how it’s like his bladder just freezes up. Only now if they’re looking at him while he’s trying to eat something or after he’s forced something down, he pukes. 

Oatmeal, cereal any kind of meat, that first week and it feels like his insides become his outsides. Bobby makes spaghetti and Dean spends the whole evening in the bathroom unable to even look at it. Bobby makes Maccaroni and Cheese, Dean gets two spoonfuls down before the noodles start looking like chopped up veins. Sam produces jello and Dean spends twenty minutes shaking and watching the chunks jiggle like half gelled blood in his bowl, just standing there in the kitchen leaned against the sink before Sam takes it from him—tries to wrap his arms around him and Dean has to fend him off with a hard shove to get away. 

Dean goes with Sam while Bobby’s out on a job and Sam won’t leave him alone—just won’t leave him alone, like he’s a kid or something—and Dean gets lost in the motion of the crowd, finds himself standing in the middle of an aisle while Sam’s looking at cereal two down, staring at a little blonde girl in a shopping cart with her mother… and loses it. He just—just loses it. 

It’s not overt, he doesn’t start screaming or throwing things or pull a gun. He just stands there, too still, barely breathing with sweat pouring off him in sheets while that little girl stares at him. Smiles like cute little kids do with their round cheeks and gaptoothed mouths, waves and Dean can feel his fucking heart beating in his eyes. 

He doesn’t even swing at Sam when his brother grabs him, puts himself between Dean and the girl and breaks their eye contact. Dean’s too scared to fight back, too scared to move or think. He has his hands up, knuckles pressed into either side of his throat under his ears, nails pushing in on soft flesh looking for bloody purchase.

People are staring at them, someone says something about ‘gay’ another replies with ‘must be retarded’. There are a few women who huddle together and watch, whisper to one another about autism or post-traumatic stress, how kind ‘The Big One’ is for doing what has to be done and not caring what other people think—But neither Sam nor Dean care. Sam has his brother’s face pressed between his palms, fingers like horse blinders to keep Dean focused only on him. 

Really, it’s because of that girl that Dean finds it. He comes back to himself and Sam is staring at him with wide concerned eyes , his jaw is clenched and there’s a weird tremble to his breath like he’s the one whose scared shitless because of some little kid—Dean shrugs from under his hands, looks away, flicks his eyes to the right and sees the produce section. “’nanners…” Is that miserable croak his voice?

“What?” Sam puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder even though he’s knocked it off twice now, it goes right back. 

“Over there… bananas,” Dean swallows past that wasteland in his mouth; “I-I think I could eat that.” 

Sam looks, eyebrows up and spies the display. 

“No bananas in hell,” He’s serious, means it like a joke, but Sam takes him at his word. Buys ten pounds of bananas. What the hell are they supposed to do with ten pounds of bananas?

Sam makes a pie. He makes pancakes, banana pudding, banana bread, milkshakes and goddamned banana splits. 

By the end of the week Dean hates bananas. Never wants to see another one again. EVER.

Bobby brings Sam a burger when he comes back from his job but Sam doesn’t even get to smell it, Dean takes the bag and rips into it because it’s the only thing in the whole place that doesn’t smell like fucking BANANAS. He has half the burger eaten before he realizes what he’s doing. Almost sprays the living room with the contents of his mouth when he sees the surprised jovial look on Sam’s face. Sees Bobby’s eyebrows have retreated under the bill of his hat and forces himself to swallow.

Sam’s expression falters; “What’s wrong?”

Dean swallows again to make sure it stays down, lets out a breath and takes another, smaller bite; “Can I get a beer?”

0-0-0

It doesn’t change, he can’t always make himself eat, but it gets easier if he doesn’t think too much. Just watches Sam and does his thing. 

The dreams though, remain a constant. Sometimes it is all darkness and he can feel hands holding him down, that FACE is moving over him and there is only cold hard PAINrevulsionshame while familiar words are whispered in his ear. Others he’s flayed open with a demon’s accuracy, no surgeon could be so precise, watching as his organs are cutburnedtorn away. Sometimes he’s the one doing the cutting. 

The content of the dreams may change, but they are always there. The worst though, are the ones that don’t involve hell. The worst ones involve sitting on a couch with a warm body next to him, smiling, laughing… only for Dean to realize that the Cas next to him isn’t real, none of it is—and it melts away to blackness, to the cold hard fact of Castiel. 

Sam gets a call exactly nine days after Dean’s return. He takes it, is fidgety and scratches his wrists and his neck. Says he’ll be back as soon as he can, but when he goes out to put his things in the car, Dean’s already behind the wheel, has the radio on and the engine warm. 

“I’m fine on my own—“

Dean rolls his head on his shoulders and grins at Sam from under his sunglasses; “You wanna ditch me that bad, Sam?”

“No—no, it’s not—“

“Then what’re you waitin for?” He revs the engine and pulls up a few feet.

Sam follows, still gripping the open door. “Stop it, come on, quit dickin’ around, you’re not—“ _You’re not in any shape to be out there, Dean. You’re broken. And don’t lie about it I can see it in your face._

“I’m what, Sam?” There’s no humor in his voice. 

“You’re still not well—“

“I’m fine.” 

“Dean, you—“

He pulls up a few more feet, laughs to himself when Sam stumbles, grabs the door and leans in to glare at him. 

“You’re a dick!” Sam throws his bag into the back seat; “It’s a one-man job, take me two days, tops—“

“Well, it’ll only take a few hours if there’s two of us.”

“Dean—“

“Come on, you got me. I’m worth at least two other guys.” 

Sam scowls; “That so?”

“Yeah, that’s so.” 

They stare at one another for a long time. Dean revs the engine again, grins wide and turns the radio up. 

Bobby’s standing at the corner of the house by now, watching, rubbing his hands clean on a rag. Sam looks up and meets his eyes, searches for some kind of help here, but Bobby just jerks his chin as if to say; ‘Get goin’.

Dean cackles and Sam slumps into the passenger seat, doesn’t even get his feet in the door before Dean flips the locks out and the Impala jumps forward like a rabbit out of a box. 

Sam curses, reaches over to turn the radio down but Dean smacks his hand away. It feels good in a weird way, like maybe—maybe Dean is actually OK, but Sam sees the dry redness of skin washed too roughly on his brother’s wrists, sees bruises in Dean’s palms shaped like fingernails and teeth marks on his lower lip. Dean isn’t OK, he’s just good at pretending, good at lying. He’s been doing it his whole life and if Sam didn’t know his brother so well, hadn’t seen the terror in his eyes he may have actually bought it. May have believed the story Dean still insists on telling him, that he doesn’t remember anything from Hell. 

Sam blinks and he can see through the façade, see how his brother hates change, hates appearing weak so he overcompensates. He laughs and drinks and flirts at women because it’s expected of him, because Before, that is what he enjoyed. 

Sam watches his brother’s expression while he explains the job. Capture and relocate a rock wyrm that had taken over a golf course. Rock or Stone Wyrms look pretty run-of-the-mill, in fact Sam isn’t entirely convinced they’re supernatural more as just weird animals. Docile, and rarely aggressive unless their nests are threatened rock wyrms look like giant salamanders, usually gray or brown in color with ‘stony’ protuberances along their backs and heads. The only thing necessarily BAD about them was the fact they were often confused for alligators and that they could be upwards of eight feet long. He wouldn’t have bothered if it hadn’t been for—the song on the radio changes and Dean twists the knob so hard it almost snaps off into his hand, plunging the car into silence. His jaw is tight, lips pale and compressed. Sam stares at him, watches as Dean’s right hand returns to the wheel, grips with white knuckles—

He takes a deep breath and lets it out, turns his gaze from Dean to the road peeling back in front of them, knows deep inside that he’s doing the right thing and steels his nerves. 

It was about four AM when they arrived, too close to dawn to go to the golf course and expect to find anything, so Sam parked by the river and slithered into the back seat for a few hours rest. 

It was a long day, boring. Sam had expected to be doing… other things, but because of Dean’s presence, he was forced to send a text; ‘Dean came with me, we’ll have to wait until tonight.’

_‘Just ditch him and come on’_

Sam stared at the message, glanced up at his brother sitting on the Impala’s trunk with a beer, giving the pizza in his hand a nauseated once-over before he returned the slice to the box, Sam turned back to his phone; ‘I can’t. I’ll see you tonight’

There was no reply, but he could feel the condescending ‘whatever’ anyway. 

Nothing really worked out like it should have, the night watchman that was going to let Sam in to catch the rock wyrm wasn’t scheduled, so he and Dean had had to sneak in and climb over a fence then creep from shadow to shadow looking for the thing. 

Once they’d spotted it, the hunt was on so to speak. 

Actually catching a rock wyrm was harder than you’d think. They are exceedingly slippery and strong and although they don’t have teeth or claws, the mucus they secrete when agitated is mildly venomous. Sam was fine because he had no open cuts or sores and washed his hands quickly in the water feature the rock wyrm had been trying to hide in. Dean on the other hand, once they’d finally wrestled the beast down and tied a pillow case over its head; wrapped and tied it up in a tarp and were carrying it out, had the ‘goo’ all over his abused hands and bruises from being tail whipped by the thing. 

It was another two-hour drive, Dean in the passenger seat staring at his hands where they’d begun to swell, or alternately staring at Sam with an incredulous look on his face, while the wyrm made duck like clicking and growling noises from the back seat. 

It hadn’t been too difficult. For his first ‘Get Out and Go’ HUNT after… After. Dean thought it was kind of tame. He’d been more stressed out dealing with the Witnesses. Stone wyrms weren’t exactly challenging when you were used to dealing with Demons. But, then again, it was satisfying, DOING something instead of just tinkering with that C-10 in the back of Bobby’s garage or throwing rocks at Oldsmobiles. It had taken his mind off things, forced him to focus on what was in front of him, not what was creeping around in his head. 

It—it was nice to be OUT THERE with SAM again, to be hunting something and saving people… Even if it was just from an overgrown lizard that likes to scare the shit outta rich golfers and pig out in the koi pond. 

He was DOING something and that—that felt good. 

The stone wyrm quacked again and Dean choked back a laugh. Turned to watch the world passing by outside the window and relished in the returning snort of humor from Sam. 

Susan McHenry was an older woman who dealt with obscure ‘supernatural’ creatures, she had a farm further south where she took in the ‘harmless’ breeds and let them live in relative safety. She had agreed when Sam called her, to meet them and take the beast off their hands. She drove a beat-up Ford pickup truck with an aluminum water tank in the back and with Sam’s help untied the wyrm and transferred it from the Impala. 

“I feel ridiculous,” Dean let Sam dump more water over his hands and rubbed them together gingerly with some soap Susan had given them. 

“Does it hurt?” Sam handed him a towel to dry his hands with and winced.

“No,” Dean flexed his fingers; “Just swollen… Kinda stings.”

Susan was making sure the wyrm was settled in the tank for transport, snapped a padlock on the lid so it didn’t try to escape and turned to them with her hands on her wide hips; “It’s a defense mechanism… So bigger things won’t try to eat it.” 

“Yeah, I can imagine. This stuff gets in your mouth you’d probably choke to death,” Dean scowled at his palms and wrists, glad Sam had had the presence of mind when they noticed the swelling to help Dean get his jewelry off. This would have turned ugly fast if they hadn’t. “Jesus, my fingers look like sausages!”

Sam was washing his hands with the soap as well, just in case. 

“Oh, Damn… What if it—what if it gets on your…” Dean looked suggestively down at his crotch and shifted uncomfortably. 

Susan tilted her head back and laughed hard. “You’d wind up in the emergency room,” She leveled her gaze seriously; “Neither of you got that friendly, I hope.” 

They shook their heads. 

There wasn’t really a cure for Rock Wyrm venom, but it wasn’t going to cause Dean anything more than annoyance until the swelling went down so other than washing their hands thoroughly they didn’t worry about it. 

Sam took out a room in the nearest town, watched Dean roll into bed without bothering to change. With his hands so swollen he wouldn’t have managed it and he was too proud to ask his brother for help. 

Sam draped Dean’s coat over his shoulder said he was going to shower because he was covered in goo, and when he came out Dean was fast asleep. The swelling had gone down considerably and Sam breathed out a sigh of relief as he pulled his shoes back on, paused in the door to just stare at the curl of Dean’s back and swallow down his own misgivings. This is right, I have to do this. He’s taken care of me his whole life, now I have to return the favor. 

Dean doesn’t hear him go, doesn’t even know Sam was there honestly, he might be lying seemingly peacefully in a hotel bed but he isn’t there. There’s a cold voice in his ear, a demon in its true form circling him. Twisted, deformed, scarred and SMILING. 

He’d always thought Hell would be a place full of snarling mouths and gnashing teeth, not gleeful grinning—AWFUL faces. Maybe that’s worse. 

He’s chanting, knows he is but can’t stop it— _Please-pleasepleasepleaseplease._ The Demon moves again, cold hands scratching open his skin.

_“Oh, but I thought we were enjoying ourselves!”_

_No—no please, please just let me go. Please stop—_

Twisting claws into his back, worming their sweatbloodfilth slick digits in and ininininin, _“You’re a little bit pathetic, you know that? I haven’t even got to the good stuff yet. All of my family you’ve sent back to me—you thought you were so tough, fifty little words and POOF, the Demon was gone?”_ He laughs, _“All you were doing was sending them back to Daddy with cuts and bruises… Now, how would that make you feel? Seeing some big bully throwing your kids around—“_

_Please—nononono—nogodpleasestopstopit—_

_“—You’d want to make him pay… wouldn’t you?”_ He leans close, breathes burning fetid sulfuric smoke out in a laugh, _“No… no… We’re just getting started,”_ He leans close, wrapped around Dean like a snake, all clawing limbs and sticky toohot skin, looks down his nose and smiles a little wider, catches sweat on the tip of his tongue and traces the trail of it up toward an ear—trembles and whispers the words, not loud enough to drown out the screams, but loud enough to be heard; _“I’m going to have so much fun with you, Dean… We’re going to have so much fun—“_

He wakes up with a gasp, eyes watering. The other bed is empty and his stomach is rolling, threatening. His hands are balled into fists and they ache, are no longer swollen, but hurt like they had been not long ago, stiff joints and tender skin. He breathes out slowly, counts backward from thirty and closes his eyes, feels a shudder run through him chasing the nausea. 

The voice is unexpected. Just a greeting and his name and Dean feels like he’s going to tear through his own skin. He rolls right off the bed and into the floor, presses his back against the side of Sam’s bed and has his gun trained on the angel’s back before he even knows what he’s doing. 

The angel looks almost curious, “What were you dreaming about?”

He doesn’t move, keeps the gun up because he can’t process the concept of putting it down right now, just grinds his teeth.

Castiel swallows, Dean watches how his Adam’s apple bobs in the prickly sheathe of his throat, remembers pressing his mouth to it, breathing quickly against warm skin—the sharp quick PUSH of Cas’s body into his own—Remembers biting that same spot while that THING had held him down—

Eyes flick to his, hold and Dean sees something sad in them, but grinds his teeth and slowly lowers his gun to the floor at his hip, pushes his hands over his face and breathes in—out. He climbs to his feet and sits on the bed, twists the collar of his coat between stiff fingers. “What do you want?”

Castiel looks right at him. “You have to stop it.”

“Stop what?”

Castiel’s face hardens, but it’s his eyes—it’s always his eyes—denim blue and lit from behindwithin, with something like pity… or regret. He presses two fingers to Dean’s brow and—

And Dean’s right back to square one, the residual peace in his chest from dealing successfully with the rock wyrm and the witnesses is gone… Everything is gone. 

0-0-0

Dean wakes up afterward in the same position he’d been in before, maybe he didn’t move at all, maybe it had all been in his head. His nails are biting holes into his palms, he’s shivering and clenching his teeth. 

Castiel is sitting on the end of the bed staring at the far wall. There is a crease between his brows and a tension in his jaw. The clock ticks over another minute… Three have passed since he woke the first time and Dean wants to just stop breathing. Instead he sits up and bends over his thighs with his arms around his stomach, gags at his shoes and presses his forehead to his knees. “S-send me back… Let—let me try again— I—I can save her, I’ll do it right this time. I know what I did wrong—” I can fix this. 

Castiel sighs but doesn’t look at him. “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” There’s something different about his voice, quieter, “You couldn’t have stopped it.”

“What?” He doesn’t look up, is too busy fighting the guilt in his chest down. “Yes, I can—Send me back!”

“Destiny can’t be changed, Dean,” He turns his head to look at him and there is no veil in his eyes now, just resignation and sympathy. “All roads lead to the same destination.”

“Then why send me back there at all if I couldn’t change it, why make me live through that!”

“Because you needed to know the truth, you needed to know what we do.”

He snarls, turns his head and glares at the angel, “What the hell are you talking about! What was the point of that!”

Castiel’s head turns forward again and locks on the other bed. 

Dean looks up after a moment and stares as well, finally realizing his brother isn’t there. Where is Sam?

“We know what Azazel did to your brother… What we don’t know is why, what his endgame is—” 

“He’s a demon, what do any of them want? Chaos, souls, random pointless torture—“ He scratches at the scar on his shoulder with rough nails, grinds his teeth and pushes on through a shiver; “Pain, that’s what they want. They want to take away everything you have and watch it burn just because they can.”

Castiel breathes in and out; “Other demons, maybe… Azazel? No… This was not random. His choices were deliberate, but he went to great lengths to cover his tracks. We need to know why.” 

“Then you go back—You go back and stop the son of a bitch—Go back to before he started this bullshit and STOP HIM.”

“I can’t.”

“Why! You can send ME back but YOU can’t go?”

“It is not my place to interfere.”

Dean is on his feet before he even knows his brain has sent the order to his limbs; “You pulled me outta hell, I’d say that’s pretty big interference.”

“That was God’s will—“

Dean opens his mouth to retort but Castiel is on his feet now too, standing too close, to solid in front of him, so near Dean can smell him, can feel the heat of his ‘vessel’.

“—It was Destiny that this should happen, Dean. I cannot alter Destiny any more than you could tonight.” 

Dean’s breath hitches in his chest, gets caught somewhere below his tonsils and refuses to budge. 

They stare at one another for the span of about two heartbeats, but to Dean it feels like a lifetime. 

Castiel is looking at him—into him—but there is something in his eyes there wasn’t before. Something Dean can’t put a name to but he wants to reach for it—draw it out and… “Where’s Sam.”

“Four-twenty-five Waterman…” His gaze hardens. 

Dean steps back and away from him, grabs his coat off the bed, rifles through his bag and eaves his gun. He hears the angel’s warning, stands stone still in the doorway with a cold weight in his stomach and breathes. 

“If you don’t stop him… we will.” 

Dean pushes down the fear and the sickness and the horror of what he’s witnessed, meets Castiel’s eyes and dares him to try. 

It’s a shitty old workshop set back from the road. The parking lot is a mess, cracked concrete with weeds waist high. Dean parks a ways back, walks in and watches through a window. 

He can see his brother’s back, can see a guy tied up in a chair… some dark haired girl is standing off to the side, leaned against a wall with her arms crossed. 

The guy in the chair is a demon, Dean sees his eyes slip black and feels it like a punch to the gut because when it happens, that’s not all that changes. It’s subtle, almost more of a feeling than an actual visual thing, but when Dean sees his eyes go dark it’s like the guy’s skin splits too, warps and he’s SMILING. 

Sam says something, the demon snorts and says something back. They’ve not been here long. The thing’s still not actually fighting back, just being funny. Demons are always so funny. 

It’s not until Sam lifts his hand that Dean has anything other than a slick tight feeling under his skin. It’s not until he watches his brother’s fingers curl and—and just PULL a little in the air and black smoke starts bubbling out of the guy’s mouth that Dean realizes exactly what he’s seeing. 

It’s fascinating at first, watching his baby brother pull a demon out of its meatsuit. No Latin, no thrashing. The demon just stares up with black eyes and a shocked expression… splatters out like smoky vomit and ashes out on the floor around the guy. 

Dean thinks ‘Holy Shit’ is an applicable term. Then he says it again aloud when he realizes what he’s just seen. 

Sam just pulled a fucking demon out of its meatsuit without even touching it or uttering a word of Latin. Sam did that—did all of it with his MIND. 

He lied.

Sam _lied_ to him. 

This isn’t the first time he’s done this, Sam has been Pulling Demons for MONTHS, practicing, getting better. 

_Would he have done that to me? If I’d been stuck down there long enough… would he have done that to me? Looked right at me and Pulled me out? Sent me back to Hell with the power of his mind?_

Dean lets out a shiver, swallows back bile and watches as his brother crouches by the body, presses against its neck and turns to the woman with a wide, brilliant smile on his face. 

_“He killed a man yesterday, Dean. Isn’t it wonderful? Killed him with that bitch Ruby… Smiled as they drained him dry.”_

He moves away from the window and finds the door, opens it and steps in just as Sam is pulling the guy out of his chair, helping steady him on his feet. 

Sam’s expression goes from jovial to petrified in less than an instant. There isn’t any in between expressions, no real ‘Change’ in them. It’s simply happy then scared. 

Dean blocks the exit and when he looks Sam in the eye he’s not sure who he’s looking at. 

Sam eases the guy onto a stack of crates and rubs his palms on his hips. The girl—Dean recognizes her now, vaguely. She’s the same girl from the hotel in Pontiac—

Maybe she’s a hunter… Please, please let her be a hunter. 

Sam’s throat bobs; “Dean—“

He gestures to the guy on the boxes then wiggles his fingers at his brother; “That was impressive… Now, you got anything you wanna tell me, Sam?”

Sam puts a hand on his own chest, like he’s pressing his heart back in between his ribs. Dean knows the feeling, has done it himself, literally, but right now he’s not even really angry. It—it just hurts. Ali—The demon had told him what Sam was doing, had said he was up there fucking Ruby’s eyes black. Was squeezing the life out of people… But Dean hadn’t believed it, had KNOWN Sam wasn’t capable. Sam—his Sammy, wouldn’t hurt innocent people. Could barely stand to hurt the ones who needed to be stopped, Sam would never just randomly kill people. Never…

Sam had sworn he wasn’t using his powers. Had promised… and Dean had believed him.

“If you say ‘let me explain’, Sam, I’m—“ His breath shakes and he has to clamp his teeth together to stop the crack from reaching his voice, swallows and meets his brother’s eyes again; “I mean Jesus Christ, Sam… What the hell was that? Who is She and what are you two doing here?”

Sam’s jaw tightens and what little color was left in his face drains away. 

The girl looks at him, then at Dean, flicks her tongue over the points of her teeth and smiles a little; “Good to see you again, Dean…” Her eyes go dark, like pools of ink in her lovely face—it splits and tightens and warps and Dean knows her before she speaks again. Remembers her… Can’t unsee that wretchedness. 

It’s gone in an instant, just a flicker like sunspots in the edges of his vision, but it’s there and it’s enough and Dean doesn’t feel much of anything in that moment, is waiting for Sam’s eyes to go white and his face to split too, for the ruse to finally be over. But it’s not that simple. It won’t ever be that simple again because he’s not broken enough yet. Not enough and the show will go on until he is. 

She smiles, not with the face she’s wearing, but with what she really is and Dean smiles back—grins with that darkness he’s kept pushed down deep in himself and it feels wonderfulawfulsickdisgusting. He lunges with the knife, grabs her by the throat and slams her back against the wall, feels his pupils blow out and kindofmaybenopleaseno wants them to keep growing, bleed out with the dark and open himself wide to it. 

“NO!” Sam grabs his wrist, ratchets his arm back and pushes in close, gets himself between Dean and the demon, tries to wrest the blade away, but Dean looks his brother in the eye and SMILES. 

There’s a flash of panic on Sam’s face, horror, revulsion—like maybe he can see that split too and it’s in his brother’s skin. 

Dean brings his knee up sharp into the high inner portion of his brother’s thigh—aiming for his crotch, but Sam leans to the side, opens up his feet and Dean slams his heel down on his instep, throws his left elbow up into Sam’s jaw, twists around until he has the knife at his little brother’s throat and one hand in his hair—

_“DEAN!”_

The blade slides left to right, blood comes out—thick and red and metallic sweet in the air. He chokes, splutters, coughs—blood is leaking into his lungs, drowning him—Gasp, wet and foaming, cough—blood sprays out of his mouth, flies through the air in redblack diamond drops, splatters and speckles his skin. The hand over the wound won’t stop it, just bleeds through his fingers. 

His knees give out first, then his ankles and he drops, wheezes, falls over and Dean is on him again, pushes the knife in slow just below the ribs, pophiss—tears it free and goes for the other side, slashes the abdomen, opens it up like a pillow and shoves his hand inininin—

“DEAN!”

The knife clatters to the ground and Dean stumbles back like he’s been pushed. His back collides with the wall and he stands there staring, hands up by his face, fingers splayed and coated in phantom gore. His breathing is quick, too shallow and his vision is shrinking in at the edges. 

There’s a ringing in his ears and Sam is standing a few feet away, one hand dabbing at his neck making sure there isn’t any blood, the other is out, palm exposed, unthreatening.

Dean’s knees give out and he finds himself sitting there with his knees bent, watching the world over them with his heart beating in his neck. 

Ruby is standing there staring at him with wide eyes—human looking eyes—he can’t see the true face of her anymore but he thinks she may be gaping at him as well. 

Sam doesn’t turn, doesn’t look away from his brother, but speaks to the demon, motions with the hand he’d been prodding his neck with toward the man on the other side of the room. “He’s hurt… go… get him out of here.”

“Sam—“

“Go.”

Her lips tighten and she flicks her eyes back to Dean, then does what she’s been told. 

Dean thinks, maybe, it’s weird that his brother is ordering around a demon, but at the moment he’s still feeling blood running over his hands, still seeing images of his brother spread out under him with two hands wrist deep in his chest cavity, still alive and gasping through blood while Dean searches for that silverspark of his soul—

Sam comes forward slowly, crouches down about six feet or so away with his hands still up, picks up the knife and sticks it into his back pocket. 

Dean hasn’t moved. Still has his hands up like a surgeon coming from the scrub sink, is staring unblinking into the ether and fighting to breathe. 

“Dean?” Sam speaks slowly, lowers his palms to the floor to help himself inch forward, practically crawling. 

He can’t answer. If he opens his mouth he’s going to scream, so he keeps it closed, keeps quiet, doesn’t give them what they want. 

Sam approaches from the left, leans his back against the wall and says his brother’s name again, inches closer and experimentally waves a hand in front of Dean’s face. When that garners no reaction Sam swallows down his growing panic and breathes inout, shifts closer and loops an arm around Dean’s neck, pulls slowly, carefully until the tension gives a little and Dean’s head bumps indelicately against his chest. 

It lasts long enough for him to get his other arm around him before Dean’s fingers curl into fists and his breath stutters.

Sam counts backward from one-hundred—gets to sixty and Dean shoves him back, scrambles a few feet away and wedges himself into a corner, tangles his fingers in his hair and watches Sam with wide eyes, pupils shrunk up to pinpricks even in the semi-darkness. 

He looks almost feral, wild eyed and ready to spring. A trapped animal and Sam exposes his palms again, lowers his voice. “It’s alright… I—“

“Bullshit…”

Sam bites his tongue.

“You lied to me… You LIED to me, Sam—“

It bubbles up like vomit and Sam can’t keep it in anymore, tightens his hands into fists on his knees and wrinkles up his nose in disgust; “You fucking hypocrite… I’m SAVING people, Dean. That guy—“ He points toward the door, “I saved his life!”

“How many of them haven’t been so lucky? Huh? How many of them died before you perfected your demon outta the hat trick?”

Sam’s voice catches in his throat.

“Yeah, Sam… I know… They told me.”

His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth.

Dean forces himself up, he’s shaking, looks like he might collapse, but he doesn’t spare Sam another backward glance, just staggers to the door and out. 

Sam calls for him but he doesn’t respond. 

Sam doesn’t see him again for two days. He walks back to the hotel and waits, leaves voicemail after voice mail. Texts, emails, but there is no response. 

When he does come back Dean is quiet, pale, with dark crescents under his eyes. His hair is a mess and his clothes are wrinkled. He smells vaguely of sweat, vomit and stale barroom air. His knuckles are split open again, bruised heavily, and there’s a crust of blood on his wrists. 

Sam watches him, apologies already on his tongue, explanations carefully categorized, but Dean doesn’t look like he hears him. “What’re you doing, Dean?” He watches his brother shove things into his duffle, doesn’t even take the time to roll them up like he normally did, just shoves them in quickly. “What, are you leaving?”

“You don’t need me… You and Ruby go fight demons—“

“Hold on—Dean… come on, man,” He reaches out, intent on stopping Dean from shoving more things into his bag but Dean turns into him with a fist, catches him on the jaw and snaps his teeth together hard enough to break.

Sam is stunned for half a breath, staggers back with a hand to his face in shock, catches himself on the tv stand and stares wide eyed at his brother, dabs the blood away on his palm and rocks back to his feet, “Satis—“

Dean hits him again, harder and his eyes are empty looking. Hollow, like Sam isn’t even human anymore and doesn’t deserve an emotional response. He hits the dresser again and stays there, tongues his teeth and finds one loose, can’t help but prod it with his tongue and probe the cut on the inside of his lip. He doesn’t strike back, just stands there and meets his brothers eyes, knows this—THIS isn’t Dean right now, this is the sum of what’s happened to his brother and until it’s dealt with Dean can’t recover from this. 

Dean though, isn’t really thinking about hell. All he’s thinking about is the fact that he saw his baby brother do things no human should be able to do and if he doesn’t stop him angels will. Fucking ANGELS, man, god’s will and the fury of heaven set against his baby brother. His Sammy. Dean can’t even look those cats in the face without almost pissing himself. He can’t even sleep through the night without feeling demonic hands on him wearing the face of a dream—and on top of that he has to stop Sam from going Dark Side or the ANGELS will and there is no chance that they’ll be as merciful as a couple punches to the face. 

Sam doesn’t get it, Sam doesn’t see what he’s doing, he’s too caught up in it, too close and Dean doesn’t know how to make him see. He tries, but he can’t—he just can’t. 

Dean’s drowning in a teaspoon and it’s probably the most pathetic feeling he’s ever experienced. 

“I’m not gonna let it go too far—“

He wants to laugh, wants to but can’t. He doesn’t know who his brother is anymore, doesn’t know what’s driving him to this but he knows it’s his fault. If he hadn’t left—if he hadn’t been dragged to hell—

Sam would be dead and Dean can’t conceive of that… He can’t—there—there is no answer. His hands act without his permission, inside he’s hot and bubbling and screaming but all he can do is just grab and tear and break and choke down the urge to ball in on himself and—and… The words just come out, leave a bitter taste in his mouth and they hurt—Can’t Sam see that? They hurt and he doesn’t want to say them but Goddamnitall it’s true and it’s the only way he knows to get Sam to SEE.

Sam stares at him and it’s like he’s just a kid again, standing there on the sidelines watching while John has Dean in a corner—yelling and shoving and Dean’s eyes are down, resigned—empty. Sam feels powerless, tainted in some way and Dean’s looking at him like there is no tomorrow, looking at him like he’d rather be in hell than standing in his own brother’s presence. Inhuman… Is that really what it is? 

No… No, this is his choice, he’ll prove it. He can do this without it getting out of hand. He’s stronger than this. Dean will see, he will. He will. 

“You were gone… I was here,” He swallows, lowers his voice so it doesn’t break; “I had to keep on fighting without you.”

Dean’s jaw tightens but he doesn’t say anything, Sam doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

“What I’m doing… it works.”

Dean doesn’t move at first, breathes in like he’s been without air for a while and has to look away, rubs his hands on his thighs nervously; “If it’s so terrific, why’d you lie to me about it?”

Sam’s mouth opens but he doesn’t get a chance to speak.

Dean’s hand curls into a fist and pops against his thigh a few times, like he needs something to do with them or he’ll end up breaking something else. “Why did an angel tell me to stop you?”

Sam feels like his stomach’s dropped out and when he looks up—meets Dean’s eyes again he sees despair written on his brother’s face plainly, worry and sadness and desperation. “What?”

It’s not a smile, more of a wince, something broken and empty and Sam doesn’t want to look at it but can’t tear his eyes away;

“Castiel said that if I don’t stop you, he will,” His lip trembles and he pulls it between his teeth, steps closer as if trying to get the point across with his physical presence; “Do you get it now? Angels will stop you if I can’t… God, Sam… GOD doesn’t want you doing this.” 

He tightens his hands into fists, afraid to move, afraid to even breathe lest angels drop out of nowhere and ‘Stop’ him from doing it. 

“So, you’re just gonna stand there and tell me that it’s all good? That it’s under your control? That you can handle it, Sam?”

He takes a step back, feels like he may need to sit down, but he can’t move—really just cannot move. It’s terrifying, more so than just about anything he’s experienced before. It had been OK thinking God had plans for Dean, knew who Dean was and had ordered for him to be saved… It was something completely different to realize God knew him… and had ordered that he be stopped. 

The backs of Sam’s knees found the bed and he sat heavily, hands on his thighs, fingers rigid like claws digging in. He opened his mouth, felt the words shaking in his mouth—

His phone rang. 

It would have been funny yesterday, how he and Dean flinched at the same time over something as insignificant as a phone ringing. His hand shook as he reached for it.

The phone rang again, Sam pressed it to his ear and rubbed the aching burn from the corners of his eyes; “Hello?”

“Hey, Travis. Yeah, hey. Uh—it’s good to hear your voice too, yeah,” He paused, breathed in and let it out through his teeth. “Look, it’s not a really good time right now—“ He’s not sure why he did it, why he looked up because he really wanted nothing more than an out for this conversation, but he did. He caught Dean’s expression from the corner of his eye, saw how Dean’s hands shook and there was wetness shining on his face and Sam’s voice caught in his throat. 

Travis mentioned something about having a busted arm but Sam wasn’t really listening, his breath caught in his throat, pulled in and just lodged like the jagged piece of a corn chip. “Yeah… Okay… Well—Just-just give me the details and I’ll…” He turned away and bent over the notepad on the bedside table. 

Dean is still standing there when Sam ends the call but he’s swiped his palm over his eyes and isn’t quite looking at Sam anymore, he’s focused on the broken shards of the lamp he threw across the room. 

Sam inhales deeply and lets it out in a whoosh, looks up at the ceiling and rubs his face; “So… Angels, huh?”

“What’d Travis want—“

“It’s not important—“

“Sam—“

“You tell me _God_ wants me stopped and you expect me to just drop it?” His eyebrows arch toward his hairline; “No… God trumps Travis for the moment. Sorry.”

Dean leans his hips against the dresser and crosses his arms tightly over his chest. 

“What did Cas say?”

Dean flinches. 

“Dean—“

“Castiel, said… that if I didn’t stop you, he would.”

“In as many words.”

“Yeah.”

Sam leaned back a little so he could breathe and scratched his tongue on his teeth. “Yeah, that’s a real ego boost,” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Why?”

“Does it matter? If you don’t stop They’ll come after you.” 

Sam nods, looks away, nods again; “Okay… What else did Cas—“

“His name is Castiel—“

Sam holds up his hands and his eyes narrow; “Okay, sorry… What else did Castiel say?”

Dean purses his lips, looks away, then back to his brother. It’s a long story, but Dean has a way of abbreviating things, cutting them off so he can get the most said with as few words as possible. He has an extensive vocabulary but just because the words are there doesn’t mean he can articulate with them reliably. This is easy though, easier than he thought it would be. He tells Sam about ‘Seventy Three. Snorts and says that Dad was a wussy, wanted to buy some Volkswagen bus—“Can you imagine us drivin’ around in the fuckin’ Mystery Machine?”

Sam is gaping at him from behind his hand, eyes wide, looks like maybe he wants to laugh a little. He seems perfectly amused with the idea of their father being absent minded, love sick—kind and generous. It seems alien and Sam drinks it in. 

Dean feels himself relax a little as he speaks. His mind slips back, finds the Djinn world and compares the reality he now knows with it. He could see his father playing softball easier now, feels kind of sorry for him that his world had been so drastically altered. The vision of his mother is different though, Mary hadn’t been entirely soft and innocent and sweet. She had packed a hell of a punch and kicked him damned hard in the jewels.

“Mom was a hunter?” Sam’s eyes were wide.

Dean snorted, found his hands pulling at a fray in the bottom edge of his shirt; “I wouldn’t have believed it either if I hadn’t seen it myself. Man, that woman could kick ass… She almost took me down—“ He left out the ball kicking thing, simply because what man would ever admit that a teenaged version of their mother kicked them in the crotch and bloodied their nose?

Sam looks thoughtful, sad, but like the vision of their mother he had in his head was fleshing out into something less dreamlike and more solid.

“How’d she look?” He gave his head a shake; “I mean… was she happy?”

Dean nods, clears his throat and nods again; “Yeah… she was awesome. Funny… smart—So hopeful—” He snorted; “Dad too… Until—“

Sam nods, doesn’t need to hear it, laces his fingers together around his mouth and scrunches his face up in thought. 

Dean shuffles over to the table and sits down, drums his fingers on the tabletop nudges the book Sam had been reading and speaks more to the pages than his brother; “What.”

“Nothing.”

“Just spit it out.”

Sam sighs; “I just— Our whole family was murdered by this thing… And for what? So Yellow Eyes could get in my nursery and bleed in my mouth?” He shakes his head, rubs the back of his neck like it aches. 

Dean looks at him. Scowls and gives his head a shake; “Sam, I never said anything about demon blood.”

Sam looks away and his posture changes, becomes tense and defensive. 

Dean’s stomach boils. “You knew about that?”

He nods, speaks through his fingers as if that may filter out the context of his words; “For about a year now.” 

Dean shakes his head.

“I should have told you, I’m sorry—“

“I think you’ve said that before… A lot actually.”

Sam sighs unhappily; “I’m sorry—“

“Whatever… You don’t wanna tell me, that’s fine. I get it…”

“Dean—“

“No, no, you’re right. I mean, why would you wanna tell me? I’m the liability, right, Sam? I’m the hypocrite.”

Sam exhales, “You could have told me you remembered—“

He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t punch or break anything, just locks his eyes on a shrub outside the window and his lips curl up in something that looks like a smile but isn’t. “And what good would it have done if I had?”

There it is. 

It’s not what Sam wanted to hear, not an admission that he does remember, but it’s probably the closest thing to one Sam’s going to get.

“I could help you, Dean—“

His voice is calm, no—not calm, calm implies there is emotion behind it. Dean speaks merely of fact, of something that cannot be altered or picked away at or ‘dealt with’. His fingers lift and lower deliberately gentle on the book in front of him. He stares at his hands and that curl of his lips doesn’t fade. “No… You can’t.” 

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	8. Four Letter Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm probably going to rework a few things in the last chapter now that I'm home and settled, but in the mean time, please enjoy this little bit of angst.

0-0-0

Sam wakes up to a noise. He isn’t sure what it is exactly, but he holds completely still, feigns sleep and when the noise is repeated tries to figure out exactly where it’s coming from. 

He’d thought it was coming from next door, the investment banker and his secretary. They’d been at it most of the night, the bed banging against the wall, groaning and moaning—it had sounded a few times like a bad porno, even to the point that the secretary had been chanting; ‘Take it, take it—whose a dirty whore’ and Dean had shot soda out his nose.

Sam thought, at first they were just up to round seven… Until he heard the bed beside him creak, over used springs groaning under restlessly shifting weight. 

Dean was moaning in his sleep. 

Sam groped for his pillow and pulled it over his head, rolled his eyes and tried to go back to sleep. Dean had gone through a faze when he was fifteen to eighteen, where almost nightly he would have rather graphic sex dreams and wake Sam up with muffled mumbling and his unnatural motion from the next bed. It was probably that. Dean’s body was new, therefore it stood to reason some THINGS would just happen, especially since Sam hadn’t seen his brother scoping out any chicks lately. In fact, Pamela had been the only woman Dean had seemed even remotely attracted to and that included a few waitresses in diners looking for an out. Not to mention the women who flirted shamelessly at him in bars. 

“No—“ Dean sucked in a quick, short breath and it came out in a whine—“Nnooo.”

It was barely a whisper, if Sam had pulled his pillow over his head a moment sooner he wouldn’t have heard it at all, as it was he had to lift it up again and listen for more noises to be sure he’d heard what he’d heard. 

Dean made another sound, a whimpering inhale and when Sam turned his head he saw his brother silhouetted against the motel window, back arched up, head digging back, fingers like talons in the sheet, blankets tangled around him. His lips were pulled back from his teeth, open on a silent scream, eyes squeezed shut face wet with sweat— His legs were spread wide under the blankets and as Sam watched he seemed to seize, his body jerked and one hand slammed up against the headboard, one leg kicking out toward the foot of the bed—

Dean screamed.

The sound of it, thin, stretched and cracked like glass made the little hairs on Sam’s arms and the back of his neck stand on end. He’d never heard a sound like that before. Like someone—or something—had hold of Dean’s very soul and was—was ripping him in two— SHIT!

Sam lurched up, flung the blankets back and lunged to his feet—tripped over them and landed on his knees by Dean’s bed. Pure instinct controlled his muscles, curled his fingers on Dean’s shoulders and shook him, but there was nothing short of panic in his voice; “DEAN!”

It did nothing. 

Sam saw blood on his brother’s teeth, a tear shaped like bicuspids and incisors in Dean’s bottom lip and he wasn’t waking up. He was caught up in something and Sam couldn’t wake him—

“Please… PLEASE—“ His voice came out like nails on a chalkboard. 

“DEAN!” Sam shook him hard, pressed cool palms to the sides of his brother’s face and tried again, “Come on, Dean—WAKE UP!”

When his eyes came open there was no light in them, no recognition, no knowledge or really anything other than blank bald fear and pain. His mouth stretched open wide and air ripped into and out of his lungs quickly. 

Sam expected a fist to the face but Dean didn’t move, hung there suspended on tense muscles, head dug back into the mattress, one hand lost under the sheets, legs spread— 

Sam hovered watching his brother breathe, kept his hands up to block the view of anything but his face, didn’t smile, didn’t do anything but whisper in a voice pulled high in fear; “It’s alright—You’re OK. You’re OK.”

Dean shuddered visibly and his mouth eased a little, still open and pulling in air like a turbine but he wasn’t caught in a wide-mouthed screech any longer. He winced and his expression slipped slowly, eased back from slowly fading terror to confusion… to something like shame. 

“Sam—“

He let his breath out in a whoosh and nodded; “It’s OK.”

“Sam…”

It was only then that he truly noticed his brother’s position and the mortification in Dean’s eyes. He leaned back carefully, removed himself from Dean’s personal space and sat on the edge of his own bed in shock.

Dean blinked rapidly at the ceiling, drew his arm down from above his head and levered himself up into a sitting position, pulling his legs closed as he moved. 

Sam tried not to watch as Dean carefully untangled himself from the blankets, pushed them down like a cave around his lap and just stared for a few minutes with his jaw clenched and his nostrils flared, breathing slow and deliberate. 

Sam didn’t say anything when Dean pushed himself up on shaking legs and shuffled to the bathroom with the hem of his t-shirt pulled down toward his knees, other hand hidden from view. Sam sat there silently, staring at the window and tried to ignore the retching noises from the bathroom, or the sound of the shower running full blast on cold. The hot water pipes screamed a little when Sam had showered earlier, so he knew… He knew. 

There wasn’t getting back to sleep, Sam understood that, so when Dean came out of the bathroom he already had their bags packed and coffee waiting. 

0-0-0

Pennsylvania wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen before. It was the same as it had always been. Quaint, the road scattered with fallen leaves, rain splattering the windshield, deer looming out of the darkness as pinprick green eye reflections. A dead raccoon and a grinning opossum scuttling across the road—

Dean eyed the radio curiously and finally turned it off, fed up with the Fright Theatre ‘Muh-hoowah-hahaha’. It had been amusing when the voice actors were doing ghost stories, but this intermission ‘everybody go to the bathroom’ shit was irritating. He shifted his eyes to Sam for the first time in hours. “What?”

Sam pursed his lips and didn’t say anything.

“You’re doing a damned good impersonation of Mount Rushmore over there, Sam.”

Sam let his breath out; “So you’re not even going to acknowledge it?”

“What?”

“Whatever you were dreaming about earlier?”

“That’s my business, not yours—“

“You woke me up—“

“I thought we established you’re supposed to cover your head and go back to sleep when that happens— s’what I do when it happens to you.”

Sam rolls his eyes. 

Dean looks amused for all of ten seconds, contemplates turning the radio back on and ends up talking about the case instead. Something they can focus on that doesn’t have anything to do with Hell or the ‘whatever’ Dean had been dreaming about.

“You can trust me with this, Dean—“

His fingers tightened on the wheel.

“You’re my brother, I’m not… It’s OK if you want to talk about it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

He clicked off his pen light and folded the map away; “Dean, I… I know—“

“You don’t know anything,” The look he gave Sam was something dark and dangerous in a way no demon was. Sam’s lips sealed and his voice caught in his throat. He tried to swallow it but they just stuck there unable to go back down or come out intact, they just clung to the back of his tongue like the aftertaste of cough syrup. 

“Just focus on the case, Sam. This is a good case. An AWESOME case. Dead vic with a gnawed-on neck?” He bares his teeth and gestures to his throat; “Body drained of blood—AND a witness that swears up and down it was a vampire.”

Sam is still focused on Other things, just lets his breath out and looks out the window; “Yeah… hell of a case, Dean.”

Dean shakes his head; “Can you be a little less excited?”

Sam looks over at him sadly; “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know—‘Yippee’ or somethin’? I mean, it’s like the good-old-days, Sam. An honest-to-goodness MONSTER hunt!” He glances back at the road; “Not those half-ass-monsters you’ve been crawling all over to find.”

“Stone wyrms are supernatural creatures. They may not have powers they can exploit or that can be exploited by humans, but they are supernatural creatures.”

“Sam, I’d rather chop off vamp’s heads any day of the week than hunt down another fucking stone lizard or horny toad any day—“

“Horned Great Toad, and THEY can be very dangerous—“

Dean stares at him; “It’s a big toad, Sam…” He flaps a hand; “I’ll concede the fact that they’re nasty, but they’re TOADS… If they aren’t eating people then they’re a waste of our time. Call Edith and her brother, let them take care of the horny toads—“

“Horned Gr—“

“Sam… I’m done with the kiddy rides. Bring on the roller coasters.”

Sam props his chin on his hand and watches the world pass out the window. “You hate roller coasters.”

“Shuddup.” 

0-0-0

Dean ate breakfast because Sam ate breakfast. He put on his FED suit because Sam put his on. He drove because driving was something he could do, was good at and took his mind off shitty problems he didn’t have the energy to deal with. He talked because it was automatic, complained about Sam not rotating the tires while he was ‘Away’, rolled his nose up and grumbled that one thing he hadn’t missed was Sam’s ungodly morning STINK. 

Sam put a smile on his face and watched Dean crank the window down a little farther. 

“Eggs, man… You gotta lay off the eggs.” 

Sam thought it was worth it.

Dean snorted when they pulled to a stop in Canonsburg, motioned to the bearded guys with beer bellies in short leather pants. Sam motioned to the sign hanging over the entry to the festival grounds and was almost like someone had flipped a switch. Dean’s eyes, which had seemed empty since that morning, lit up.

Sam felt like one of those parents you see every now and again at fairs or carnivals being dragged along by an over-excited five-year-old. Dean’s eyes darted back and forth, lit on every woman in a skimpy costume and scanned the crowd. 

It—it was fun, Sam supposed. Yeah, they were here on a case but he hadn’t seen Dean’s eyes filled with that much excitement since before he’d made his deal. So, Sam shut his mouth and chewed his food and scanned the crowd. 

Dean chewed rather inelegantly. Like he’d forgotten how to keep his mouth closed while he masticated. Sam felt tempted to elbow him, remind him to take small bites or he’d choke to death—momentarily remembered exactly what that looked like—and pushed on. 

Dean did get choked, coughed and hacked over a garbage can, got it unstuck from his windpipe and kept eating—Sam considered it a minor improvement especially since just a week ago Dean would have given up. He must really like pretzels… He had to add that to the list. 

Dietrich seemed more interested in spoiling tourist season than the fate of the poor girl in the morgue cooler. Sam decides then and there that he doesn’t like the man, but Dean isn’t paying much attention to the sheriff, bends over the body and stares at the wounds on her neck. 

He gives Sam a look, maybe even a LOOK and Sam returns it, purses his lips and lets his breath out slowly. 

There are two black puncture wounds in the side of the girl’s throat, just below the jaw… Not the numerous smaller marks or jagged torn flesh one would expect from a vampire bite. 

Sam doesn’t say anything until they’re back at the festival grounds in a bar instinct and decoration makes him think should be called a ‘ye olde tavern’. 

They stop at the bar and an attractive blonde smiles at them, “I remember you.”

Sam steps back when Dean pushes in front of him, eyes sliding up and down the woman’s frame; “And I remember you, Jamie.” 

Sam rolls his eyes. Typical. “We’re looking for Ed Brewer?”

Jamie pats her hands dry on a towel and crosses her arms; “What do you want with Ed?”

They flash their badges and Dean tries to keep a straight face, tries to be serious, but when she leans closer to inspect them he can see down her blouse. “Mister Brewer was a witness to a serious crime—“

“Wait a minute…” She motions to the two of them; “You’re feds?”

Dean picks at a button on his jacket front. Sam shifts on his feet, eyes the surrounding crowd looking for an exit. 

She leans in again, “Wow… You don’t come on like a fed,” She clears her throat and Dean knows she’s doing it intentionally. 

He just looks at her evenly. 

She shakes her head; “Seriously?”

He lifts his brows and gives something that to an outsider, looks like a smile, but Sam knows the difference, it’s Dean’s ‘better believe it’ look. Sam also knows when Dean is trying overtly to get into someone’s pants and part of him wants to step back and give Dean’s ego room to fully resurrect. He hasn’t seen Dean act like his old self since four months before his death. It’s stunning… and worrying. 

Worse though, is the fact that Sam can tell his brother isn’t really interested. Dean’s posture may say ‘yes’ but the tension in his shoulders and the way his jaw is clenched say ‘no’.

Jamie’s smile goes from genuine to forced and Sam claps a hand on his brother’s shoulder to hopefully stop the train wreck before it happens. “Okay, Maverick… Uh—So, where can we find Mister Brewer?”

Jamie purses her lips and motions with one finger toward the back of the room. 

Ed Brewer is a small, snot-nozed, spindly limbed little dude with an under-bite and a sorry excuse for a goatee. Sam thinks he could probably snap the guy’s arm off shaking his hand too roughly. 

Ed compulsively swipes a hand over his face after every drink he takes and Dean follows the motions with his eyes like he’s hypnotized. Flip up lid on beer stein, grab with both hands, drink, stein back on table, flip cap down, hands in lap, wipe face… count to fifty, repeat. 

Sam identifies at least six different social anxiety disorders in the first twenty seconds. Two of which are Dean’s. 

“I told the cops everything I saw. No one believes me. Why should you be any different?” He wags one finger at them and Sam watches the man’s eyes follow it like his hand is trailing colors. 

“Believe me, Mister Brewer, we’re different,” Dean puts on that fake smile again. 

“I spoke the God’s honest truth and now I’m the town joke.”

“Marissa Wright’s murder is no joke to us and we wanna hear everything, no matter how strange it may seem.”

Dean’s leg is jiggling under the table, like he can’t keep his foot still. “We have a lot of experience with strange,” His voice is tight and Sam watches his brother’s hands, how his fingers curl into one another, the beat of his pulse in the side of his neck. Dean’s just talking, he’s not thinking, the crowd is getting to him. 

Brewer eyes them both askance, hits fifty in his head and reaches for his stein again—Dean goes tense all over, his leg quits jumping and he watches with wide eyes and his breath held. 

Brewer finishes and starts counting in his head. Dean relaxes and his foot starts bouncing again. 

It’s a rather unremarkable story Sam thinks. He’s paying more attention to Dean than anything, watches how his brother reacts to the words, to the motion of Brewer’s hands and body as he speaks. 

“Can you describe her assailant?”

Brewer pointed right at him and nodded; “Oh, he was a vampire.”

Dean inhales slowly, lets it out and flexes his fingers open and closed. “Okay, right… and by that you mean…”

Brewer gives him a frown. “You know… a vampire,” as an afterthought he flops his hand on his wrist and offers a spluttering cat like hiss. 

Dean flinches, the corners of his mouth pull down and he wipes at his cheek like he’s been sprayed. “Uh-huh… Yeah.”

Sam purses his lips and wonders if this ‘case’ is anything more than humans being stupid humans. 

Dean bares his teeth, flexes his fingers again; “So he looked like—“

“He looked like a vampire. Yanno, with the fangs and the slicked-back hair and the fancy cape and the little medallion thingy on the ribbon…”

Dean scoffs; “You mean like a Dracula?”

Brewer points again; “Exactly! Like a Dracula,” He hits fifty and reaches for his drink. Dean watches, goes still, doesn’t breathe until the ritual is over. 

Sam breathes in and out.

“Right down to the accent.”

“The accent?” Oh, boy this just keeps getting better and better.

Ed scowls. 

“What’d he say?”

“You know, somethin’ like—“ He jerks his arm up across his face and his whining droll becomes something sharp and deep and growled. “Stay away, mortal!”

Dean flinches and his hands come up, already curled into fists.

Ed’s eyes dart back and forth menacingly, his free hand out and groping toward them; “The night is mine!”

They stare, can’t help it. Dean looks like maybe Brewer’s got a second head on his shoulders and Sam thinks he’s just identified three markers of Schizophrenia. 

His hands drop back to his lap; “You do believe me… don’t you?”

Sam blinks slowly and Dean lowers his hands to his thighs, grips the fabric of his slacks and just continues to stare. 

Brewer hits fifty and takes another drink. 

“I…” Dean clears his throat; “will let you finish… collecting his statement,” He pushes up from his seat too quickly, bangs his thighs on the tabletop as he stands and would have vacated the premises completely if he hadn’t caught Jamie watching him from the bar. 

He breathes deep and holds it for a few seconds, lets it out and approaches, slides up to the bar and folds his hands—squeezes his fingers. “You got a beer back there for me?”

She doesn’t lean forward this time, “I don’t know, Agent Young, are you off-duty?”

“And then some,” He tries to smile, but can’t quite manage it, so he looks down at his hands instead, presses his palms flat on the polished wood and focuses on his breathing. 

Jamie moves away.

Sam comes up and leans his elbows on the bar beside him, folds his hands together and speaks in a low voice; “You OK?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It’s pretty crowded in here—“

“So? What’s your point?” He meets his brother’s gaze evenly. 

Sam opens his mouth to speak but changes his mind and shakes his head.

Dean looks away again. “So, goth psycho vampire-wannabe.”

Sam lets out a sad sounding snort; “Definitely not our kind of case,” He looks up and lets out a relieved sigh. 

“Agreed… But, the room’s paid for and it’s Oktoberfest…” He puts on that smile again, the one that doesn’t make it past his lips and pushes back from the bar, turns and takes a table not far away. “Come on, brother… Beer and bar wenches!”

Sam snorts and slides into his seat; “Pretty sure women today don’t react well to the whole ‘wench’ thing,” Unless you like getting kicked in the plums.

Dean’s smile is genuine this time, amused, looks pointedly toward the taps and raised his voice; “Hey bar wench, where’s that beer?”

“Coming up, good sir!”

Dean looked smug… Not the usual smug either, but that completely pleased with himself kind of smug that Sam wanted to rub in dog shit. 

“Dude,” He leaned close and said the word with lots of teeth, like it was something sexual; “Oktoberfest.”

Sam felt vaguely uncomfortable. Even more so when Dean turns to Jamie and lays on the charm like he hasn’t since Before. It’s too much like what Sam remembers, too much too soon after what Sam witnessed that morning but he bites his tongue even after Jamie shoots him down like Peter Pan. 

Dean follows her with his eyes, presses his lips together and lets out a whoosh of breath.

“Dude… what’re you doing?”

“Hmm?” He has his drink halfway to his lips, sets it back down and raises his brows at Sam; “What?”

“I haven’t seen you bomb that badly with a chick since you were sixteen.”

“I did not bomb.”

Sam blinks and feels his lips curl up; “Oh, no… Maverick?” 

Dean scowls; “Shut it… She’s a hard nut to crack—“

“Admit it, you bombed.”

“I’m working up to—“

Sam made a low whistling noise and brought a finger down from above his head to the tabletop. Made a noise like a cartoon explosion and wiggled his fingers. 

“I did not.” 

“Yeah,” He nods, puts on a smug smile of his own; “You kind of did.” 

“I’m working up to it! Cut me some slack… Like you didn’t bomb your first time.”

Sam laughs, can’t help it, looks Dean in the eye and laughs. 

Dean though, seems completely nonplussed; “Look at me…”

Sam settles himself, wipes moisture from his eyes and shakes his head to clear it. “I am.”

“I came back from the furnace without any of my old scars, right?”

Sam tilts his chin toward his chest, nods and puts on a serious face. “Okay, and?”

Dean holds up a hand and starts ticking things off on his fingers; “No bullet wounds, no knife cuts, none of the off-angle fingers from all the breaks. My shoulder doesn’t pop out when I do this—“ He waves his arms over his head sarcastically and hunches forward over the table with a weird convicted light in his eyes; “My hide is as smooth as a baby’s bottom, Sam.”

Sam seems impressed, nods in agreement—

“Which leads me to conclude… sadly,” Dean leans back and traces a smiley face in the condensation on the side of his mug, points at his brother and smiles with that weird… intensity in his gaze; “That my virginity is intact.” 

Sam balks, shakes his head and stares for a minute; “What?”

“I have been re-hymenated.”

Sam laughs again, rubs his face in disbelief and tries to say it again, can’t—so he just stares. “Please— Maybe Angels can pull you outta Hell, but no one could do that!”

The look that Dean gives him makes the words die in Sam’s throat. It’s quick, just a flash like a strobe light, but it’s there and Sam can’t unsee it. Dean needs to believe this, whether it’s true or not, Dean NEEDS this, so when he smiles again Sam doesn’t argue, just listens as Dean repeats himself, slowly, carefully and turns his eyes back to the blonde at the bar. 

Sam inhales, lets it out and just lets Dean have his way, whatever keeps Dean from looking at him like he had that morning. Whatever lets him function Sam will agree. He’ll nod and smile and make sure there are condoms in Dean’s wallet. 

Dean comes back to the hotel earlier than Sam thought he would considering. But he doesn’t look like there were any… issues, more that he’s just coming back early. 

“So, how’d it go?” Sam’s on his bed, computer on his hips reading e-mails. 

Dean pulls off his tie, smiles in a pleasant ‘I’m a little drunk’ way and shrugs; “Not bad…”

“She shot you down, didn’t she—“

“No… She’s classy… Doesn’t put out on the first date,” The way he pronounces it carefully, smile in place makes Sam feel bad for thinking what he is, for remembering the sound of Dean’s voice pitched high on a scream. 

Sam wondered how many times Dean had screamed like that in Hell without anyone there to help him, to make it stop… He wondered what horrors Dean had experienced to make him cry out like THAT. What had happened to make him react like that?

He wanted to ask, wanted to sit his brother down and ask. Three little words, three syllables, one answer that Sam already knew deep down but couldn’t accept because it was DEAN… it was DEAN and—and it just wasn’t possible. Yet, he’d seen it, his brother’s posture in his bed that morning, the fear and pain in his voice… How he’d lashed out and returned to that same position as if yanked around by invisible hands. 

Sam knew the answer already and as much as he wanted to ask he didn’t want to know ten times as much because as soon as he asked Dean would tell him the answer, either directly or with his body language and Sam couldn’t handle that kind of finality. So, he kept his mouth shut, watched Dean itch in his own body and tried to ignore the patches of red, dry over-washed skin he could see as Dean undressed for bed. The bruises just peeking from under the legs of Dean’s boxers, and the way he folded his arms around his middle when he clicked on the TV and pulled his knees up close, like he was settling in for a long night of channel surfing, like he didn’t intend to go to sleep at all. 

Sam cleared his throat, “So… Re-hymenated, huh?”

“Sam—“

“I’m just… I can barely remember you being a virgin the first time, it’s a little weird.”

Dean doesn’t reply, doesn’t look away from the TV. 

“Do I have to give you the whole Sex talk like you gave me?”

He snorts; “If it’ll make you feel better, knock yourself out.” 

Sam chuckled, flicked his tongue over his lips and crossed his arms on his chest; “Okay… ’Don’t forget the rubbers. Keep at least two in your wallet. At least! When you get in you gotta recite the whole exorcism ten times… Make sure she’s into it before you dive in—don’t be a chicken shit, ask what she likes and do that. If she wants to be on top let her, she prob’ly knows more about it than you do, so go with that. Make sure you’re usin’ the right hole, cause if you’re not she’ll pop you one… Treat her like a lady even if she doesn’t act like one and remember she’s LETTING YOU do this, so if she says ‘no’ you goddamn better listen! Understand, Short-stack?’” When he looked up Dean was looking back at him and his shoulders seemed more relaxed. 

“Sam—“

“You got condoms?”

He hesitated, prodded the bruises on the inside of his mouth with the tip of his tongue, as if he were trying to coax them to bleed again, looked at his feet under the edge of the blanket and shook his head. 

Sam snapped his computer closed, leaned over the edge of his bed and yanked the zipper back on his bag. When he sat up again Dean wasn’t looking at him, had crossed his arms over his knees and locked his eyes on the far wall, right hand on his left shoulder, left arm curled over his head. 

Sam turned the package over and over in his hand, brows scrunched. “Dean—“ He cleared his throat. 

This would be a good time to bring it up, to ask… To accept the finality of it because he really does already know the answer, deep down somewhere anyway. But Sam bites his tongue, clears his throat and puts the package on the side table between himself and Dean. Denial, it turns out, really is the best friend of cowards; “I hope I don’t have to explain to you how to use these things, because that would be all kinds of awkward I don’t think either of us could survive.”

Dean doesn’t look at him, just mutters; “I’m good,” and scratches at the scar on his shoulder a little harder.

0-0-0

Dean wakes up to Sam shaking his leg. “Hey! Come on,” His voice seems urgent and Dean pries his eyes open. It’s barely seven AM and he hadn’t been asleep long enough to dream anything apparently, which he supposes, is a good thing.

“I’m up,” He dangles his feet over the side of the bed and scrubs his palms against his face; “I’m up… What’s wrong?”

Sam’s pulling on his suit; “Sheriff Dietrich called… A man got mauled to death last night.”

“Mauled?”

Sam nodded, lips curled up but not smiling; “Witness says it was a werewolf.”

Dean blinks, shakes his head; “I thought we were after a Dracula.”

“We are… Now we’ve got a werewolf too.” 

Dean staggers to his feet and slaps at the wrinkles in his blazer; “What the hell’s going on in this town.”

Anne Marie has dark hair and light blue eyes. She’s a slight little thing with bouncy hair and long eyelashes. Dean is very uncomfortable in her presence, sits farther back from her than he should with his fingers folded together and his leg jiggling under the table, watches her slurp on a Mega Gulp that’s half the size she is full of Mountain Dew, with his nose wrinkled up.

Sam does most of the talking. 

She is just as forthcoming as Brewer was. Only she’s about half as grating on Dean’s quickly fraying nerves. Dean has a feeling that as soon as that caffeine hits her system she’s going to bounce around like a chipmunk on crack and with the sudden unexpected twist this case has taken, he wants to be as far from her as possible when that happens. 

“It was a werewolf.”

“A werewolf… you’re sure.”

“Oh, yeah,” Her eyes are too big for her face; “You know, a werewolf? With the furry face and the black nose and the claws…” She rakes her stumpy fingernails through the air and gnashes her sharp little teeth. “And the torn up pants and shirt. Like from the old movies.”

Dean leans back in his seat and that wince of a smile is on his face; “Well, I’d say that about wraps it up…” He stands and walks away, leaving Sam to make apologies. 

He’s quiet the whole car ride to the morgue, lips pursed, brows pulled down. Sam notices a little vein on his temple throbbing and decides it’s best to keep quiet. Dean had boasted this as a quick, easy open and shut, black and white case… it has turned out to be anything but. 

Dean doesn’t say anything until the medical examiner nods them through to the coolers and Sam is inspecting the tags on the doors. “First a Dracula, now a full-on movie-time wolf man?”

Sam snorts; “I know, right?” He taps the name plate and pulls the door open, extends the drawer and goes for the zipper. 

The smell hits them first, bowel, blood, the usual, but the sight of the body—or really REMAINS of it, are a mess. Pieces really, lying in the bottom of the bag, some of the flesh is missing in places, others it is sagging and clinging on by tendon and bits of vein. 

Dean’s eyes close and he takes half a step back with his eyebrows up; “Damn.”

Sam pulls a pencil from his pocket and prods through the mess; “You could say that again… Okay… whatever did this wasn’t a psycho wannabe,” He lifts out a bit of intestine that’s been chewed up and spit out— 

Dean stares at it and a hand lifts to his own stomach. “This—this doesn’t bother you at all?”

Sam blinks, looks down at the body and back to his brother; “I’ve seen worse,” He prods a little deeper, “Look at those bite marks!” Sam opens one of the wounds with his pencil; “Right down to the bone—“ Some of the muscle tissue slides to the side taking a chunk of bone with it.

“Nasty,” Dean takes another step back, doesn’t want to be as fascinated as he is by the sight of the corpse, but he is, thinks all the violent color of it is weirdly entrancing. He rubs a hand over his mouth, “If it’s strong enough to tear a healthy man apart—limb from limb, it could definitely be a werewolf.” 

Sam pokes a little further up into what’s left of the chest cavity; “No… Heart’s still there… and in one piece.” 

The sheriff isn’t much help, just adds to the confusion by announcing the fact wolf’s hair was found on the body. 

Dean wants to get drunk. Very drunk. Sam agrees. 

Dean eats because Sam eats. Drinks because he wants to be drunk. Complains because this bullshit makes no sense and he’d just wanted something ordinary, alright? A couple of vamps chowing down on drunken tourists. Open and shut, cut off the heads, burn the bodies, end of story. 

“But no! No, it can’t be that easy, no…” He tips his empty mug toward his mouth, scowls into the bottom of it and puts it back down on the table; “You sure it’s not the trickster? I swear to god, Sam if this is him I don’t care what kind of agreement you have with him, I will cut him up into tiny little pieces and feed him to stray cats!”

Sam sighs and shakes his head; “It’s not the trickster… Yeah, it’s his style, but not his MO.”

“He has an MO?”

Sam rolls his eyes, “The victims weren’t assholes for one… Marissa was a nurse’s assistant in a children’s ward… And Rick Deacon may have been a horny teenager, but he was a boy scout, Dean… Literally.”

“Boy scouts can be assholes too.”

Sam rubbed his forehead. 

The blonde came over about then with more beer, Sam noticed how much more foam was in his than Dean’s and thought it was somehow funny. He whistled low, like a cartoon character dropping off a cliff and Dean gave him a scathing look.

0-0-0

The Mummy is just too much, it—it’s absurd. Sam thinks maybe it really is the trickster until he and Dean are allowed on the scene and he finds the label on the inside of the sarcophagus. He holds it up for Dean’s inspection; “Yeah… Trickster would have gone for authentic, not movie prop.” 

It’s a Dracula not a vampire, a wolf man not a werewolf, but the mummy is just dumb. More than dumb, its cliché and Dean feels embarrassed that these things—whatever they are, are pulling the wool over their eyes so much three people are dead.

Sam waves him off when he realizes the time and Dean leaves his brother at the crime scene. 

It’s a little bit of a shock when he rounds the corner of the tavern about twenty minutes later and literally runs into Jamie. It’s probably more surprising than amusing when he sees what is most definitely a Dracula standing there with tears running out of his bloodshot eyes and smelling heavily of mace. 

Jamie puts Dean between herself and the… well, it’s a Dracula, so yeah. 

Dean would have been scared if the guy didn’t look like such a fucking tool, as it was he just stared, surprised, “Son of a bitch…”

Okay, it’s a Dracula. Go figure.

“You should not use such language in the presence of my bride!” The Dracula stalks forward with slow deliberate steps, eyes wide and wild and streaming from the mace Jamie’s still brandishing at him. He’s got snot running out of his nose and when he speaks it comes out rough and slurred but definitely in a stereotypical ‘Transylvanian’ accent. 

Dean can’t really believe this guy is serious until he’s about two feet away. So, he smiles and swings, feels the guy’s nose break under his fist and grind hard to the wrong side of his face. Hears a wheeze and a very un-Transylvanian sounding curse but before he can kick the bastard while he’s down the dude pops up again, face intact and fucking hisses at him with the most ridiculous looking set of fangs in his mouth Dean’s ever seen. 

Dean isn’t sure if he should be scared or offended, decides he’s pretty much pissed off now and takes another swing, is blocked—so he tries the other arm, is blocked again and lifted bodily off the ground by his neck in a grip that is too strong to be human and slammed back against a wall. 

He doesn’t really listen to the Dracula’s words just snags his fingers on the nearest piece of flesh and pulls— an ear clean off his head. 

It’s a little bit of a relief when the Dracula doesn’t turn into a bat—as cool as that may have been—and it’s more frustrating than anything when the bastard gets away on a fucking Vespa, but Dean deals with it, guy left a piece of himself behind anyway so it doesn’t matter. They’ve got him now.

Shifters are disgusting, Dean keeps remembering what he learned in sixth grade in health class when they’d given the students The Talk. He’d gone in expecting to see pictures of boobs and lady parts, instead he’d been subjected to diagrams and big weird words like; Uterine wall, menstruation, sloughing off of tissues… He couldn’t look at a shape shifter without thinking of women’s periods and at least, on this front, he could agree with Sam. 

There are some things that a guy just doesn’t need to know about. 

Sam is relieved that they know how to fight the damned thing now and that it should, theoretically, be easy.

Now, it’s just a matter of finding the shifter. 

Brewer is the most reasonable suspect. He ‘witnessed’ the first crime, made sure the police knew he’d seen it and complained when it didn’t get him the fame and recognition he’d wanted. It makes sense that it would be him. 

Dean feels a little relieved the weird panic that had built in his chest while in Brewer’s presence may in fact be justified and waves Sam off to deal with the guy. 

Jamie takes It pretty smoothly. At least once he explains that she isn’t being stalked by an actual Dracula. She’s a little unnerved that monsters, or at least some of them, are real, but it makes sense. Really it does. She’s an open minded individual. She bends her fingers this way and that nervously as she paces meets Dean’s eyes and speaks carefully.

“You’re not really FBI, are you?”

Dean smiles, takes another drink and meets her eyes; “Not so much.”

“So, this is what you do? You and your partner, just tramp around the country on your own dime until you find some horrible nightmare to fight?”

He shrugs, “Some people paint.”

Jamie just looks at him, really honestly looks at him; “Wow.”

Dean smiles… or tries to; “What?”

She’s showing her teeth, more of a wince actually and her fingers drum on her thighs; “That must suck… I mean, you’re giving up your life for this terrible… I don’t know, responsibility,” She slides into the booth across from him and folds her hands together, leans her chest against them and searches his face for something. 

Dean keeps that ‘smile’ on his face for a few seconds, holds his glass up ready for another drink, but can’t quite choke it all down. He clears his throat, glances toward the window and scratches his cheek, tries to occupy his hands so he’s not squeezing his fingers or twitching his leg or wishing he were anywhere else but here. 

“Last few years I started thinking that way. And—uh— i-it started sort of weight on me, what I was missing, yanno. Of course that was Before—” His throat feels tight and he bares his teeth at it, washes down the ache with more booze and tips the bottle toward his glass again. 

She tilts her head to the side curiously and Dean feels his heart ratchet up a few notches, thinks she looks kinda wrong with her head tilted to the side like that. Like her hair’s the wrong color and her eyes and the shape of her mouth is wrong… He blinks, pushes it down and back and tells himself this is OK, it’s right. It’ll be OK. 

“A little while ago, I had this… Let’s call it a near-death experience,” He nods firmly, notices how her gaze has narrowed like she’s seen something, like she’s caught sight of something as he fought to force it down again. “Very near.”

She reaches across the table and catches his hand, traces the slowly healing bruises and cuts on his knuckles and the still pink flesh where there had been blisters. 

Dean isn’t sure he likes the contact. Wants to pull back and away from it because her skin feels weird against his own. Smooth and warm and too soft. 

Her eyes shift to his hand and back to his face, confusion giving way to curiosity.

He shivers, grits his teeth and pushes through; “And when I came to… everything was different,” He breathes in slowly, eyes still on where her fingers are resting against his, “My life’s been… different.” 

She draws her hands back, doesn’t retreat fully, just pulls back enough that their fingers barely brush and Dean feels his heart begin to slow, his breath evens out and his voice only shakes a little as he continues; “I realized after that that I help people… I-I save them from what I… I save them and it… it’s worth it.” 

Jamie’s expression is pinched and her eyes look maybe a little lost, a little worried. “If you don’t mind me asking… What—what happened?”

He swallows and slowly—carefully, pulls his hands back, scratches at his inner left wrist because he doesn’t want to reach up to his shoulder and draw attention to it and pulls the edges of his lips up; “I—uh…” He clears his throat; “I… Let’s just call it a POW deal and leave it at that, alright?”

Her lips part and something like pity or understanding flashes in her eyes, but she doesn’t say anything, just nods.

0-0-0

It’s not Brewer.

Dean is not amused, but at least the dude’s just normal everyday weird, not psycho-shifter weird. 

Jamie’s friend Lucy on the other hand… Yeah. Not a fan.

Sam finds his clothes in a pile in some corner or another and folds them up while Dean wipes their finger prints off everything and Jamie sits there on the foot of the bed with the gun still in her hand staring. 

It’s quick and over with without a lot of fuss. Jamie doesn’t go home alone, not that Sam expected anything else. There are condoms in Dean’s wallet and he tells himself that’s all he cares about. 

Jamie’s apartment is nice, a split level she sometimes shares with her friend Loraine when Loraine’s boyfriend gets too drunk. 

It’s decorated in cream and soft mint green with pecan colored highlights the same shade as her hair and every so often a pastel accent pillow. It smells clean and soft like flowers and laundry detergent and her soft hands still feel weird on his skin. 

There isn’t anything satisfying about it. His hands shake and he only stays up by virtue of the fact she’s all warm inside and the way she rocks in his lap means there’s stimulation. It… it’s overwhelming. The weight of her, the CLOSENESS— He wanted to push her back, shove her away and separate himself from the feeling. She was too close, too soft and the noises she made in his ear were just… All it would take would be his hands wrapped around her neck and a little pressure and those noises would be panic instead of need. She tried to kiss him but he turned away searching for air, for a way out. He felt restrained, pinned. What should have felt wonderful or at least ‘good’ caused his chest to tighten and his vision to shrink in at the edges. 

This—this wasn’t the same… None of it was the same.

It was ruined. 

“Dean—Hey—Hey, what is it?” She stops moving, just sits there staring at him with part of him still inside her and he—He doesn’t want this anymore, doesn’t want some stranger touching him, doesn’t want his body considered public property… He doesn’t want to share his skin when he’s just got it back. He doesn’t want it to happen again, doesn’t want himself cut into pieces like they had in Hell. He hadn’t had anything there, hadn’t had ANYTHING— not even his thoughts. Everything he’d done was because he’d been told, because he’d been struck and cut and burned and everything he was had been stolen. He had become nothing but the sum of his tortures, nothing but the rage and pain and hatred.

He didn’t want to share himself like this—didn’t want to lose himself bit by bit, splinter by splinter until he didn’t have anything left to call his own. “Don’t… I-I can’t do this—“

“What? What are you—“ She stops. Just stops, her arms still around his neck, body flush and possessing part of him and the look on her face is shock and sadness and sympathy.

He tangles his arms around her hides his face in the soft dip of her clavicle and fights to breathe. 

“It’s OK,” Without the stimulation it’s kind of hopeless and she moves away—he’s separate again. He’s himself again and it’s such a relief he pulls his knees to his chest. He’s still shaking, can’t stop and his ears are ringing. He feels hot and cold all at once. 

“Shhh,” Her hands press against his face, comb over his hair and her lips brush his temple; “It’s OK… Shhh, don’t worry about it. You’re OK…” 

He isn’t even aware he’s talking until his voice hitches in his throat and his vision goes watery. He doesn’t know what he’s said, how much he’s revealed until he sees the horror on her face and he knows he may not have said it all, but he’s said enough. He’s SAID it… ALOUD. 

Oh, Jesus… 

She pulls him close, wraps her arms around him and just—just stays there. Her breath hitches and her fingers pet over his head like she’s trying to comfort him. It shouldn’t seem as funny as it does, but he can’t help but laugh wetly into her shoulder and squeeze his eyes shut, pull his legs up tighter. 

“It—it doesn’t count, does it? It doesn’t count if you don’t want it, right?”

She looks so sad and he feels like the fuckup of all fuckups for ruining something that shouldn’t have been sad, shouldn’t have been pathetic but is now because he can’t keep his goddamned mouth shut. It is because he’s cracked inside like an egg, slowly rotting from the inside out.

“Don’t tell him,” He grinds his teeth, buries his face in her hair and chokes on the lavender scent of her shampoo; “Don’t tell Sam… Don't tell my brother.”

“I won’t…” She pulls him close, curls against his side and says it again, “I won’t.” 

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	9. Taking Candy from Babies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, had some personal business to attend to. I should update again on Friday or Saturday, then I have a Business Convention to go to and I'll be gone again for four days or so. October and November are so frickin' busy! *cries*
> 
> Oh well, at least it isn't tax season.
> 
> 0-0-0

0-0-0

Dean likes sweet stuff. Sam has known this for a while. He enjoys sweet, fatty, greasy, sorry excuses for food.

Sam is willing to bet that as long as no supernatural fuglies get his brother again, his cholesterol will be what kills him. Dean just has no respect for roughage. Sam blames himself. If he hadn’t looked so happy at Dean chomping into that burger at Bobby’s weeks ago, maybe he would have been able to prevent Dean’s new body from suffering the same abuse as his old one.

“Dude,” Dean’s standing at the foot of his bed half dressed in his suit staring at his belt. “What gives?”

Sam looks up from tying his shoes and shakes his head; “There’s more than one hole in that belt, Dean. Just use the next one up.”

Not that Sam’s complaining… too much. He’s glad Dean’s been eating reliably, more than glad actually, it’s a titanic weight off his shoulders. He just wished Dean would pick foods that didn’t ping in the triple digits on the calorie scale.

Yeah, OK, fine. One deep fried Oreo isn’t going to kill him, whatever… but six of them? On top of fries, a double Whopper and a milkshake?

“I do NOT envy your digestive system later,” Sam turned his own burger in its wrapper and continued scanning the news article.

“What’re you talkin’ ‘bout,” Dean stared at him, one cheek pooched out from the food; “I’ve got a—“ He swallowed noisily; “—cast iron constitution.”

Sam wrinkled his nose; “Yeah… Well, just for that, I’m not goin’ out to get you pepto when you’re stuck on the toilet later.”

Dean snorted and kept eating.

 0-0-0

As cases went it seemed pretty straight forward. Man dies from swallowing razorblades in Halloween candy. Luke Wallace, professional contractor, forty-one, married, new baby.  Wife Stephanie, thirty-four, works at the local bank, happy family, loves holidays, about as apple pie as you can get.

Sam deals with the widow while Dean checks out the kitchen. Looks for signs of sulfur or really anything at all that would indicate what they’re dealing with. They have a feeling it’s a witch, but you can’t really be sure until you’re sure.

Stephanie is reasonably distraught, stands a good six feet from Sam with her arms crossed defensively. She’s been berated by the police already, probably had neighbors whispering behind their hands. She doesn’t look like she’s slept in the two days since the incident, Sam can’t blame her. Truthfully, he hasn’t gotten much sleep either lately, for completely different reasons.

Stephanie keeps staring at the floor, most likely where she found her husband’s body. There’s a little bit of a stain between two of the floorboards and her eyes keep going to it while she talks.

There isn’t much more information to glean from her than they had to begin with. She keeps glancing at Dean as he moves around the room, looking in cabinets and into drawers. She’s more observant than the usual people they interview. She’d asked to see their badges twice and had even made a comment about Sam’s hair not being regulation.

Sam’s mouth had opened and closed a few times, Dean spoke casually, smiled a little; “He just came back from personal leave a few days ago… I thought I’d cut him some slack until he gets back into the swing of things.”

She had been wary of them since.

Dean finds the hex-bag and removes it, tucks the pouch into his pocket and pretends he hasn’t done anything.

After that Sam asks only what they need to know, gages her reactions and finds nothing disingenuous but still sends Dean to the library and into town to see what he can dig up on Luke Wallace.

Dean comes back with a large plastic shopping bag full of candy and a grin on his face.

“Really?” Sam shakes his head; “After that guy choked down all those razor blades?”

Dean just stuffs another butterscotch-peanut butter cup in his mouth and grins. “’s Halloween, man.”

“Yeah. For us, every day is Halloween.”

Dean snorts and tosses his candy wrapper toward the garbage can and plops down onto the sofa beside his brother patting his stomach in a vaguely satisfied manner.

Sam shakes his head, he’s glad Dean’s taken a new interest in food, really he is. But he’s pretty sure Dean’s put on about five pounds since Canonsburg and gone through at least that many bottles of scotch. He seems to constantly have a candied alcohol smell about him now and Sam knows trading a blooming eating disorder for flat out alcoholism isn’t any healthier.

Dean folds his fingers together and lets his knees sag outward in a laid-back comfortable way. “Who pissed in your cheerios?”

Sam shook his head.

Dean smiled and maybe a little of it reached his eyes.

Sam motioned to the dismantled pouch in front of him; “We’re definitely on a witch-hunt… But this,” He shifted the leather swathe closer and motioned to the contents; “Isn’t your typical hex-bag.”

Dean leans forward, still chewing; “No? What’s so special about it?”

“Goldthread,” Sam picks up the herb between forefinger and thumb, passes it over and lets Dean sniff it. “An herb that’s been extinct for two-hundred years,” He plucks up the coin next, “And this is Celtic—and I don’t mean some New-Age knockoff. It looks like the real deal, like six-hundred-years-old real…” He’s holding it reverently imagining it being struck in some mint way-back-when. All sweat and molten metal.

“Down boy,” Dean snorts and picks up the last bit of the package; “And what’s this? Some kinda’ burnt twig?”

Sam’s lips pull back from his teeth and his eyes widen when Dean lifts it to his face and sniffs it; “That… is the charred metacarpal bone of a newborn baby.”

Dean looks at him, blinks and tosses it back onto the swathe of leather, shivers all over and scrubs his fingers on the leg of his jeans with a groan of disgust.

“Relax,” Sam scooped the contents of the hex-bag back together and set it aside; “It’s at least a hundred years old.”

“Oh, right,” Dean stands up with another shiver and goes toward the sink to wash his hands; “Like that makes it any better…” He gives himself a deliberate shake, like a dog throwing water from its fur; “Witches, man… fuckin’ witches.”

Sam watches him go; “Well, it takes a pretty powerful one to put a bag like this together. More juice than we’ve ever dealt with before.”

Dean scrubs his hands with his fingernails and for a few minutes there’s nothing but the soapy sounds of his fingers moving together. He’s going on two minutes before Sam clears his throat;

“Dude… You’re clean, knock it off.”

He gives Sam a somewhat dazed look and turns off the water, pats his hands dry on a towel  and gives another full bodied shake.

Sam purposefully doesn’t look at him when he speaks; “You find anything on the victim?”

After a minute Dean answers, clears his throat and starts talking again like nothing had happened; “Luke Wallace was so vanilla, he made vanilla seem spicy.”

Sam snorted and pushed his hair back from his face.

“I can’t find any reason why somebody would want this guy dead,” Dean eases himself down to sit on his bed, elbows on his knees, fingers squeezed together.

Sam rubbed his face; “So, we got nothin’.”

“Well,” Dean shrugged one shoulder, “I got a ton of candy in the car… Want some?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Where did you find candy the day before Halloween?”

“Store.”

“What store?”

He made an innocent face and shrugged.

“Jesus, Dean, did you steal candy from a bunch of kids?”

“I did not steal candy from a bunch of kids…”

Sam let out a relieved sigh.

“I won it fair and square.”

0-0-0

Jennifer Arnoult was seventeen, that’s what the police were saying. Sam watched as the paramedics carried the body out on a stretcher, covered in a grey blanket. There were teenagers milling about outside in the yard, police making sure they didn’t sneak off until their parents came to collect them. Sam knew the story just by looking around.

Parents were probably away for the evening, Justin was home alone and decided to throw a party, break into Dad’s liquor cabinet and mess up his Spiderman bed sheets. It was the set-up to a hundred or more teen-slasher-flicks Sam had been subjected to growing up and a thousand or more supernatural related deaths across the country every year.

Dean looked around with his eyebrows up, took everything in with a single glance and landed on the blonde giving her statement to the policeman with glasses. He batted Sam’s chest with the back of his hand and straightened his tie; “Dude… I got this one.”

Sam rolled his eyes and tucked his hands into the pockets of his slacks; “I got two words for you… Jail. Bait.”

Dean looked visibly affronted, stuck his chin up and narrowed his eyes; “I would never.”

Sam blinked and shook his head as he walked away, ignored the way Dean shrugged at his back as if saying ‘okay, maybe that one time, but can you blame me?’

Tracy was calm… maybe a little too calm considering she’d just seen one of her friends boiled alive.

Sam scanned the room, checked the four cardinal directions for places a witch could hide the hex-bag. The sofa was the most logical place and the easiest to slip it in between the cushions without someone knowing.

Sam finds it faster than Dean had the one at the Wallace house, wiggles it between his fingers when Dean glances over the girl’s shoulder and it’s over pretty quick after that.

Tracy says she doesn’t know Wallace, doesn’t think Jenny did either. The water had been just fine a few seconds before when she’d done it. How could water boil that quickly?

Sam opens the hex bag back at the hotel and the same three items are in it. Bone, herb, coin. Dark magic… Powerful magic.

They’re up most of the night searching but sometimes you can’t find anything because the spells were never well documented. That’s the thing with witches, some of them are really tech savvy, others come from the dark ages… literally.

Dean’s on the computer this time. He has a few tabs open, one is a depository of all things celtic, tells the meaning of the herb and what kind of coin they’re dealing with. Another tab deals with the victims, Wallace and Jenny, their lives in digital print…The third is porn, simply because Sam would expect nothing less and maybe if he stares at the busty brunettes giggling in an endless gif loop on the front page, maybe he’ll feel something worthwhile.

Sam’s on the far bed paging through ancient books with his head propped on one hand. He hasn’t said anything for a while but every so often he scratches the back of one calf with the top of his shoe and rubs his face.

It’s quiet for a little while longer, a car pulls in to a vacant spot across the lot from them and there is drunken boisterous laughing as the couple stagers into their room for the night… or hour, depending on how you wanna look at it.

Dean clicks away from the porn and scratches his neck, scrolling through the life and achievements of one Jennifer Arnoult for a third time.  “I’m tellin’ you, both these vics are clean, Sam… There’s no reason for wicked-bitch payback.”

Sam sits up and taps a passage in the book he’d been pouring over; “Maybe because it’s not about that.”

Dean looks up again with his lips pursed; “Wow, insightful.”

“Maybe this witch isn’t working a grudge. Maybe they’re working a spell…” He climbs to his feet and brings the book over, “’Three blood sacrifices over three days. The last before midnight on the final day of the final harvest,’” He turns the book and hands it over to Dean; “Celtic Calendar, the final day of the final harvest is October thirty-first.”

“Halloween.”

“Exactly.”

Dean peers down at the book, taps his fingers on the image on the opposite page. “Okay… What are the blood sacrifices for?”

Sam scratches his left eyebrow and motions to the picture Dean was examining; “Uh—If I’m right, this witch is summoning a demon.”

“Wonderful.”

“But—not just any demon,” Dean motions with the flat of his hand, “Samhain.”

Dean blinks; “Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“Dean, Samhain is the damned origin of Halloween. Celts believed that October thirty-first was the one night of the year when the veil was thinnest between the living and the dead. It was Samhain’s night—I mean, masks were put on to hide from him. Sweets left on doorsteps to appease him, faces carved into pumpkins to worship him!” He licked his lips and flipped over a few pages to show Dean another image; “He was exorcised centuries ago.”

“So, even though Samhain took a trip downstairs the traditions stuck?”

“Exactly! Only now instead of demons and blood orgies—“

Dean hummed and his lips curled up; “Orgies.”

Sam shook his head; “—Halloween is all about kids, candy and costumes.”

Dean laced his fingers together and squeezed; “Okay, so some witch wants to raise Samhain and take back the night?”

“Dean, this is serious.”

He exposes his palms; “I am serious.”

“We’re talking heavyweight witchcraft. This ritual can only be performed every six-hundred years.”

Sam’s expression is deathly serious, downright menacing, but Dean’s got perky breasts jiggling in his peripheral vision and is a little creeped out they’re not doing what they should be doing for his downstairs brain.

“And the six-hundred year marker rolls around…”

Sam’s eyes close in exhaustion; “Tomorrow night.”

Dean rocks back in his seat and rubs at the bridge of his nose; “Naturally,” He exhales between pursed lips and pages back through the images Sam had shown him; “Sure is a lot of death and destruction for one demon.”

Sam makes that nervous popping noise between his lips again and his fingers tap out a drumroll on the edge of the table; “Yeah, because he likes company. Once he’s raised, Samhain can do some raising of his own.”

Dean cocks up an eyebrow. “Raising what exactly?”

“Dark, evil shit… and lots of it. They follow him around like the friggin’ pied piper…” He gestured to the book and let out a blast of air.

“We’re talkin’ ghosts?”

“Yeah.”

“Zombies?”

“Uh-huh.”

His nose wrinkled up; “Leprechauns?”

Sam rolled his eyes; “Dean—“

“What? Those little dudes are scary!”

Sam rolled his eyes at the ceiling; “Look, it just starts with ghosts and ghouls. This fucker keeps on going. By night’s end, we’re talkin’ every awful thing we’ve ever seen and a whole bunch of ‘em we haven’t. Everything we’ve ever fought, all in one place, at one time. Hankering for human flesh.”

Dean presses his palms into his knees and tries to rub out the itch in his skin. He… he doesn’t like the sound of that, not that he’d liked the sound of any of this so far, but he hadn’t expected this case to be so big.  “It’s gonna be a slaughterhouse.”

“Ya’ think?” Sam takes a deep breath and pushes back from the table. “We’ve gotta find this witch, Dean… We’ve gotta find them and stop them.”

“Obviously.”

“So,” Sam made another of those popping noises, then another; “We’ve gotta find the connection. There has to be a connection.”

Dean nodded, fingers still fisted on his kneecaps. “Okay… Where do we start?”

Sam reached for his computer; “First, we—“ He blinked at the image on the screen then to his brother in something akin to disgust; “Dude… We’re working.”

He shrugged one shoulder up to his ear. “Not like I was logged in or anything.”

“Right… right. People are out there dying and you’re looking at porn.”

Dean focused on the tabletop. Pursed his lips and after a moment climbed to his feet; “I’m gonna go check out a few of Wallace’s haunts… You—“

“I’ll see what I can put together about Jennifer.”

Dean nodded, grabbed up his keys and made for the door.

0-0-0

Wallace’s ‘Haunts’ were pretty tame. His office was a bust, guy loved his family, had pictures of his wife and son everywhere. He was the kind of mundane everyman you saw in the background of romantic comedies… not that Dean watched those.

 Fucking guy was in the bowling league. Sponsored a T-Ball team and Dean kind of hated him for being so nice.

Dean wound up at the local bar sitting with his back in a corner nursing a beer. There were a few people sitting around the place. A group of young women in revealing Halloween costumes tying cherry stems into knots with their tongues.

A man and woman in a booth across the room smiling and flirting at one another… the guy had his hand up the woman’s skirt and she was kneading the inside of his thigh under the table.

Dean didn’t notice the guy at the bar until he’d gone up for his second beer. He had messy dark hair and gray eyes… not blue. But his jaw was the same shape, same height and build and from the side when Dean approached he thought, just for a moment… and couldn’t keep himself from staring.

The guy glanced up at him over the rim of his scotch and cocked an eyebrow, raked those quicksilver eyes up and down Dean’s front and the corner of his mouth curled up.

“Well, hello there.”

Dean’s heart lodged up in his throat and his hands shook when the bartender passed over another bottle. The eyes weren’t right… the voice wasn’t right… the shape of his jaw was though… the slope of his throat and scruff of his cheeks.

If Dean closed his eyes and told the guy not to talk, maybe—

Maybe.

0-0-0

Ten AM found Dean behind the wheel again, parked two houses down on the opposite side of the street watching Stephanie Wallace’s house. Last night had been a bust, useless, pointless—futile.

His stomach rolled so he shoved more candy down his throat, chewed and savored the sickeningly sweet taste, crumpled the wrapper and tossed it toward the opposite door, fished around in the plastic bag he’d balanced between his knees… but couldn’t find anything else.

Where’d it all gone? There was like—five pounds of… He hiccupped and turned to stare down at the mess in the floorboard and across the passenger seat.

Oh…

His stomach made an ominous burbling noise and tightened up like it had weeks ago whenever he caught Sam or Bobby looking at him when he was trying to eat.

He wondered, absently, if caramel corn, chocolate and licorice would taste the same coming up as they did going down and he rolled his eyes skyward as he forced his current mouthful down, both arms around his middle.

His phone rang just as he was contemplating the benefits of emptying the contents of his stomach into the rhododendron across the street and adopting an entirely sugar free diet. It took a good chunk of what energy wasn’t invested in controlling his gag reflex to fish the phone out of his pocket and answer.

“What?”

Sam exhaled; “How’s it going?”

Dean snorted but the sound turned into an aborted kind of pained grunt when his stomach seized again. “Awesome…”

“You alright?”

“Fine…” He let his breath out slowly and leaned back in the seat a little, popped the button on his jeans and spread out a little, hoping that helped the weird burning twist in his gut. “I talked to Mrs. Razor Blade again earlier… She was less than happy to see me—practically threw me out actually.”

“Smooth, Dean.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been watching her house for hours now and I’ve got a big steamy pile of nothing…”

Sam made a noise in the back of his throat, exasperation mixed with growing anger; “Look, Dean… Someone planted those hex-bags. Someone with access to both houses. There has to be something. Anything…”

“I hope we find ‘em soon cause I’m startin’ to cramp like a…” The flash of pale gold to his left stole his attention and when Dean glanced up he saw a familiar face set below a head of corn yellow hair. “Son of a bitch.”

“I told you. I told you not to eat so much junk food, but you wouldn’t listen, so stop complaining—“

“No—No, Sam I mean son-of-a-bitch… It’s her.”

“Who? What do you mean? You—you found something? Who is it!”

Dean pulled his knee up toward his chest, breathed slow through another hard twist in his stomach and the words came out on a whine, barely audible as he reached for the keys. “The girl… The cheerleader. It’s the cheerleader.”

0-0-0

Sam was stretched out on his bed when Dean came in the door, one hand on his stomach the other up, finger raised asking for a moment to collect himself before they started brainstorming. He was practically limping, came in and went straight for the bathroom.

He could feel the smug _‘itoldyouso’_ smile on Sam’s face as he slammed the door.

“Hey,” Sam called through the wall; “You OK?”

“Peachy,” He exhaled slowly and belched outta taste like burnt popcorn.

Sam was still on his bed when Dean came out fifteen minutes later, snagged a bottle of water from the fridge and took a seat at the table by the window.

“Feeling better?” Sam’s eyebrows were up and his lips were thin, pinched, barely concealing his amusement.

Dean took a long slow drink and glared. “What’d you find out.”

Sam nodded, smiled, forced it down and cleared his throat; “Our apple-bobbing cheerleader—“

“The Wallace’s babysitter… She told me she’d never even heard of Luke Wallace.”

Sam nodded and scrolled down a little more on the page he’d been scanning; “Interesting look for a centuries-old witch.”

Dean paused with the water bottle halfway to his lips; “If you were a six-hundred-year-old hag and you could pick any costume to come back in, wouldn’t you go for the hot cheerleader?”

Sam snorted.

“I would…” He could imagine it, perky breasts, all softness and curves and bouncy hair. Friends to go shopping for matching bra and panty sets with… Pillow fights… innocent lesbian experimentation— Football player boyfriend, or maybe some messy haired math geek with glasses and a black belt… Strong arms to fall into and feel safe in—

“Okay…” Sam’s eyebrows were up near his hairline; “Moving on…”

Dean flinched and fisted his hands together between his knees, his teeth found the divot in his lower lip where they always seemed to rest now and sank in just enough to sting.

“Well,” Sam motioned to his computer screen; “Tracy’s not as wholesome as she looks… I did some digging and apparently she got into a violent altercation with one of her teachers,” He passed over the laptop and watched Dean scan the report. “Got suspended from school.”

Dean nodded. “Well, guess we should start there.”

Sam nodded and rubbed his palms on his knees; “You want me to do it? You’re lookin’ a little pale.”

Dean snorted and pushed to his feet, “And let you have all the fun? I don’t think so.”

They were dressed and at the school within thirty minutes. Sam laughed as Dean climbed out of the car and motioned to a candy wrapper stuck to the seat of his pants. Dean didn’t think it was funny and tossed the bit of shiny plastic away.

The receptionist in the front office was one of those women who thinks she’s better than everybody else. Her body carried an air of lost opportunity, bitterness and barely concealed hatred. Her words were short, clipped and spoke plainly of her self-claimed importance to the continued smooth function of the school. Dean thought she was a Grade-A Bitch and stood in the background because he just simply didn’t want to deal with her.

She had short fluffy hair with a very bad dye job and blocky platinum blonde highlights. She’d rubbed in self-tanner so often her skin had taken on a carrot orange hue and she’d completely plucked her eyebrows out and drawn them back on in a high imperial arch with a blue-green makeup pencil.

Sam put on his most sincere face and tried to act like all his smiles weren’t actually grimaces.

The vice-principal wasn’t nearly as intimidating. She was a taller woman in a pant-suit with close cropped graying blonde hair and an unfortunate affinity for blue eye shadow. She answered the questions Sam threw her way and when prompted offered a post-it note with the teacher in questions room number printed in quick precise script on it.

It was the art teacher, which Dean thought was a little humorous… until he stepped into the room and found himself looking up into twisted, grotesque faces hanging from clips on a metal drying grid.

His ears started ringing and his jaws clenched, heart rising slowly, inexorably, up his throat.

Empty eye sockets watched him, gaping red mouths screamed silently at him as he passed. Some of the faces were twisted, heavily lined and… and SMILING. Others were dark and heavily textured with leaves and snake like scales—

It just kind of was THERE all the sudden. He’s sure it had been hanging there all along, but he hadn’t seen it until he was right under it.

There were no eye holes. Just dark sockets with something glinting deep in them. Smooth features pulled up and down like a gaping bottomless maw set back into someone’s skull. It looked wet… looked like it could drip blood on him. A shape pressing out through fabric drenched in blood.

It looked almost alive, empty, sad and wailing. It was nothing like the other masks around it… This thing looked—looked familiar. Like it had been slowly and carefully peeled off some poor screaming bastard’s face and hung up for him to stare at while they cut.

He could hear it breathing. Soft hissing inhales/exhales pulled thin and tight on whimpers like sobs. Too scared to scream, too hurtbrokenfilthyRUINED to even conceive of shouting for help because none would come… None would ever come and he had accepted that. This was all there was now. Blood and pain and rot and filth.

It watched him, blood dribbling from its mouth, eyes bruised and so heavily swollen there was nothing but specks of light deep in the darkness… He pushed his knife in and cut it out.

“Bring back memories?”

_Hands and claws and teeth tearing into muscle and skin. Wet thin flesh stretched tight over sharp ridges that were supposed to be bone but were more like cracked stone cut into the vague shape of bones. An environment given life as it forced its way in—_

He didn’t flinch. Couldn’t. Couldn’t look away. Even when Sam stepped between him and the Face he could still see it, burned into the backs of his eyes like acid. His stomach hurt… Bad. Like a hot spike had been rammed up under his ribs and was slowly twisting, winding up his intestines like a spaghetti noodle on a fork.

“You OK, Dean?”

“What?” He could feel sweat beading on his brow, trickling down the side of his face.

“You spaced out on me there… You alright?”

He tried to swallow, couldn’t quite manage and tried again with no success, wound up coughing into his elbow and turning away from that… that Face. “Fine… I’m fine.”

0-0-0

You would think finding one girl in a city that size wouldn’t be difficult. By four that evening Dean had talked to and subsequently been dissed by so many teenaged girls he felt inadequate and scummy under his skin just like he had when he’d been in high school. Nothing like submersing yourself in all the angst and hormones of adolescence to make you feel so alive and writhing with worms and dog shit.

Sam hadn’t had much luck either. Tracy’s apartment across town was small, well-kept and a complete waste of time. Aside from the plethora of celtic themed posters and blankets, sketchbooks filled with nightmarish scenes and a few token feminine care products stashed under the sink, Sam found absolutely nothing of interest.

“Luck is not our style. Her friends don’t know where she is, it’s like the bitch hopped a broomstick,” Dean twirled the room key on his finger and rubbed at his stomach again.

“She could be making the third sacrifice any time.”

“Yes, thank you, Sam. I wasn’t aware of that.”

The kid just kind of appeared out of nowhere. Some dumpy little boy in a homemade space-man costume with half a cookie jar on his head and old dryer hose duct taped to his backpack. He held up an orange vaguely pumpkin shaped pail and spoke with the authority of any ten-year-old on a mission. “Trick-or-treat.”

Dean rolled his eyes and motioned to the neon sign blinking above their heads; “This is a motel, kid.”

“So?”

“So, we don’t have any candy here.”

Sam hummed and jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the car; “Yeah we do… You’ve got like a ton of it—“

Dean showed his teeth and turned slowly to look at his brother; “We did, but it’s gone.”

Sam’s shoulders sagged; “Really? You’re gonna wind up in a diabetic coma, Dean.”

“Yeah, well at least it’s not bananas,” He turned and offered the boy a smarmy looking grin; “Sorry, kid. We can’t help you.”

“I want candy.”

Dean’s eyebrows went up; “Well, I think you’ve had enough.”

Dean, until that moment had considered Sam’s patented Bitch-Faces to be the most intense and withering in the universe; he had not, before that time, been introduced to Liam James Satterfield the Third and did not know the full extent of the boy’s genealogy. Nor was he aware of the fact that Liam was the youngest child and only son of a family of nine and that he had learned, quite quickly, how to scowl with the greatest of them. The look he gave Dean Winchester in that moment would have melted steel had he not been sequestered behind the indestructible Pyrex of his mother’s pilfered cake platter lid.

Dean, however, had oh so recently returned from Hell and knew a death glare when he saw one. His smug grin faltered and he took a surprised step backward away from Liam and turned to watch as the boy shoved violently past him.

Sam was tittering like a school girl when Dean caught up to him outside their room.

Dean shook his head and was opening his mouth to comment on the snot-nosed-brat when Sam’s whole demeanor changed. One hand whipped back to keep Dean out of sight and the other drew his gun, had it aimed and the safety off before his heart even had time to skip a beat; “WHO ARE YOU!”

Dean lurched into the room with his hand on the butt of his own weapon when he recognized the hunched shoulders and messy dark hair and everything in his chest dropped toward his knees. “Sam—SAM, WAIT!” He pressed a hand to his brother’s chest but didn’t dare get near the gun. He exhaled slowly, let his heart beat ease and spoke the words with an air of disappointment; “It’s Castiel… the angel.”

Dean pushed his brother’s hands down and he heard the safety click on as Sam eased it back into the holster at the small of his back. He turned and noticed another man—taller, broader in shoulder and waist with a shining bald head standing by the window. “Him, I don’t know.”

Sam, however wasn’t listening, was standing there literally agape, eyes wide and breath coming in quick little jerks while he stared at Castiel as he shifted to his feet.

Castiel looked back at him and there was something—something weird looking about him. His collar was loose, his tie crooked and although he’d always looked pale, his skin had taken on a somehow sallow tint. What caught Dean off guard though was his eyes. For an instant Castiel looked so—so incredibly tired. Weary… He looked at Dean with some weird shard of hope and saddened desperation in his eyes, but when he turned to Sam it was gone, merely exhaustion; “Hello, Sam.”

Dean heard his brother give a soft little whimper of a noise and when he looked noticed Sam had color in his cheeks, something like a blush and he was moving forward on jittery limbs like a teenager talking to their crush. He felt a low jag of jealousy and his mouth opened to tell Sam to back off but he bit the words back and swallowed them down, let them twist and fight with the steady ache in his stomach and tried to forget about them.

“Oh, my God—Oh—uh—I-I didn’t mean to—Sorry…” He came forward with his hand out and a stupid grin on his face; “It’s an honor. Really. I-I’ve heard a lot about you!”

Castiel’s brows pulled together and he stared down at Sam’s hand in confusion. Sam just stared back hopefully, like a little kid wanting to be treated like an adult.

Castiel’s features softened and he carefully clasped Sam’s hand in both his own; “And I you… Sam Winchester… the boy with the demon blood.”

Sam winced and his smile faded.

“I’m glad to hear you’ve ceased your extracurricular activities.”

Sam pulled his hand back and a low voice rumbled from the other side of the room, like thunder felt through the earth;

“Let’s keep it that way.”

Dean moved forward cautiously, put himself between his brother and the stranger; “Yeah, okay, Chuckles,” He turned and regarded Castiel from the edges of his vision; “Who’s your friend?”

Castiel didn’t answer, just met Dean’s eyes evenly and spoke quickly; “This raising of Samhain, have you stopped it?”

Dean blinked, taken aback. “Why?”

“Dean, have you located the witch?” There was an urgency in him now, you couldn’t really hear it in the inflection of his voice, that was always kind of flat, but it was in the cadence of his speech.

“Yes, we’ve located the witch,” He shook his head in disbelief, couldn’t meet the angel’s eyes directly because there was such bright intensity in them it was like looking into the sun.

“And is the witch dead?”

“No, but—“ Sam flinched when Dean’s voice rose, drowning his out.

“We know who it is,” He offered a grin, one of those sarcastic; ‘You’re so cute, now leave me alone and let me do my job’ grins.

Castiel’s lips compressed and he moved away. “Apparently, the witch knows who you are too,” He retrieved a bound leather pouch from the nightstand and tossed it at Dean. “This was inside the wall of your room. If we hadn’t found it, surely one or both of you would be dead.

Dean exhaled slowly, stared at the bundle and tossed it toward Sam’s pillow.

“Do you know where the witch is now?”

Dean looked at his brother with his lower lip pinched between his teeth again. His hands were fisted at his sides and his leg was jiggling a little. Sam looked at the ground.

“We’re working on it.”

Castiel’s chin lifted and lowered, he breathed but it didn’t seem to do him any good; “That’s unfortunate.”

“What do you care?”

Castiel regarded the stranger’s back and turned to Dean again. His expression was closed off while he spoke, completely neutral, “The raising of Samhain is one of the sixty-six seals.”

Dean let out a blast of air and took a careful step back, arms crossing over his chest; “So, this is about your buddy Lucifer?”

“Lucifer is no friend of ours,” The guy at the window turned and looked at him with a blatant air of distaste. Like Dean was the shit on the bottom of his shoe.

Dean swallowed a lump in his throat; “It was just an expression—“

“Not a very tasteful one.”

Castiel spoke again, louder than normal, as if to stop the altercation before it began; “Lucifer cannot rise.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Dean said, narrowed his eyes at Castiel and wrinkled his nose; “I’m doin’ what I can here, alright? This isn’t exactly easy—“

“The breaking of this seal must be prevented at all costs.”

Dean pursed his lips, crossed his arms tightly and looked at his shoes before he spoke; “Okay, great. Now that you’re here just tell us where she is and we’ll gank her.”

And there it was again, that spark of sadness in Castiel’s eyes. “We are not omniscient.”

Dean’s head bobbed forward on his neck. “Excuse me?”

“This witch is very powerful… She’s cloaked even our methods.”

Sam had his hands up, palms out, he jerked his thumbs toward the door; “Okay, we already know who she is. So, if we work together—“

The guy at the window has turned around completely now, is staring at them with dark cold eyes. “Enough of this—“

Dean snaps, bares his teeth and brushes past Castiel like he intends on tackling the stranger and ripping into him with his bare hands; “Okay, who the hell are you anyway? Nobody asked you for your opinion.”

Castiel steps back around him, stands in Dean’s line of sight but not between them; “This is Uriel… He’s what you might call a ‘Specialist’.”

Dean’s eyebrows pull down and Sam steps closer, like he wants to be close enough to Dean to create a united front should the need arise… Like he already doesn’t trust this Uriel as far as he could throw him. “A specialist? In what?

It’s not so much spoken, not even really translated through glances. The barometric pressure in the room just seems to change, like they’re bugs in a jar and someone just screwed on the lid. Castiel’s gaze flicks to him and that weird shine is back in his eyes. That—that discomfort.

Dean feels like his throat has been coated in ashes and he tries to swallow; “What’d I miss… What’s goin’ on?”

Sam though, understands, his breath hitches and he bumps into Dean a little as he steps to the side. He’s been pouring over books for the past three weeks now, reading anything and everything he can on angels and God—he’s practically a walking angelic encyclopedia at this point. The name must have clicked, must have been locked away back in that brain of his and it had just taken a minute for all the information to load.

Castiel swallows again and speaks slowly, carefully; “You… Both of you need to leave this town immediately.”

“And why would we want to do that?” Dean wrinkles his nose; “A second ago you were talkin’ about ganking witches, now you want us to pack up and leave?”

Castiel looks away, focuses on the wall and the flicker is gone from his eyes, there’s nothing but cool composure in its wake; “You need to leave this town immediately, because we’re about to destroy it.”

It’s like he’s been punched in the throat. He thinks, maybe Castiel’s joking, but then he realizes the absurdity of that statement. Castiel doesn’t joke. The last time Dean saw him the guy threatened to throw him back into the pit for back-talking. He’s serious like the plague, forget a fucking heart attack. Dean is sure that his heart stops, that he’s just died and fallen back onto the rack, but Sam’s staring at him and breathing shallowly, quickly.

Dean turns and stares at the angel, takes in that familiar face and the shock of messy hair on his head; “This? THIS is your plan? You—you’re gonna just smite the whle fuckin’ town?”

“We’re out of time. This witch must die,” Castiel is speaking quickly again, urgently; “The seal must be saved—“

“There are a thousand people here!” Sam’s voice is shaking, disbelief, shock, fear, Dean can hear it all and he feels a slick sharp edged darkness creeping into the corners of his vision. Feels that hard hot ache in his stomach twisting deeper and deeper, up and up from under his ribs into his esophagus. He presses his hands to it and leans into it a little, hoping that will help.

Uriel is looking down his nose at Sam; “One thousand two-hundred and fourteen.”

“And you’re willing to just—just kill them all!”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve… purified a city.”

Sam’s nose wrinkles up in disgust and he takes a step backward to put more distance between himself and Uriel.

Castiel breathes out, eyes still on the far wall and he has a hand up, palm facing downward held at waist level between himself and the Winchesters; “Look, I understand, this is regrettable,” He looks up at Dean with his brows pinched, but there really isn’t much emotion in his eyes at all.

Dean snorts; “Regrettable?”

Castiel’s gaze hardens; “We have to hold the line—“

“What line? The only line I can see here is between right and wrong and THIS is about fifteen different kinds of wrong, Cas!” It comes out involuntarily, simply because he’s upset, thinking of all those innocent lives just snuffed out because of one damned witch and he can’t believe what he’s hearing, can’t conceive of the fact angels—FRICKIN ANGELS—want to abandon ship and blow her to kingdom-come! It feels natural to say it, shorten the angel’s name into something familiar, something beloved, but at the same time it makes his stomach twist up again and he pushes in a little harder on the naked hurt of it.

Castiel breathes deep and lets it out, narrows his eyes at Dean like maybe he’s heard those thoughts himself. “Too many seals have broken already—“

Dean steps in close, uses that bare inch, maybe inch and a half of height he’s got on the angel to his advantage and stares down his nose at him; “So you screwed the pooch on some seals and now this whole town has to pay the price?”

“It’s the lives of one-thousand against the lives of six-billion. There’s a bigger picture here—“

“Right,” Dean’s hands are shaking and that slimy sharp feeling has robbed his breath but he pushes on, pushes it down because here he can, he can ignore it here, can work through it and he’s not gonna let a stupid belly ache from too much sugar and memories of eyes that exact shade of blue bring him to his knees when a thousand people could die if he caves in. “And what exactly is the bigger picture here?”

“God’s will,” Uriel tilts his chin up, and to Dean he looks like any other self-righteous douche bag he’s come across in his lifetime. From the bigots who threw fits over birth control to the assholes who beat kids to death for being gay. People, Dean had always upheld, were crazy. They could hate and kill you for a million different little reasons that made no difference in the long run and base entire cultures and governments on exclusion and hatred and intolerance. Maybe angels weren’t that different after all. Narrow minded sons of bitches.

“God’s will…” He wrinkles his nose; “Does God not care that a thousand innocent people would be killed?”

Uriel meets his eyes evly. “Compared to the alternative it’s an acceptable loss. Most of their souls would be saved in the end—”

“What about the kids, huh? They haven’t even got the chance to live yet! You’d just kill them all? Just nuke the whole town and wipe your hands of it?”

“Lucifer. Cannot. Rise… He does and hell rises with him,” Castiel’s voice is low and what Dean sees in his eyes is not at all what he’s expecting. It’s tiny, so tiny he’s not sure he’s really seeing it until he realizes it wasn’t there a minute ago. There is fear in Castiel’s eyes. Worry… uncertainty. “Is that something that you’re willing to risk?”

Dean’s mouth is dry again.

“W-we’ll stop this witch before she summons anyone! Your seal won’t be broken and no one has to die!” Sam’s voice is full of desperation and when Dean looks at him he sees how his brother is shaking, sees how all the color has drained from Sam’s face and there is sweat beaded on his brow. Sam doesn’t like killing even when it’s necessary, the idea of more than a thousand people being wiped off the face of the planet is terrifying his brother. Sam is desperate and scared and needs a chance. He NEEDS to try because he can’t conscionably sit back and allow this to happen.

“We’re wasting time with these—these mud monkeys,” Uriel’s nose is crinkled up and his eyes are glass like and full of disgust.

Castiel steps back again, like he’s caught in perpetual motion, coming and going, to and fro, pulled back and drawn away. No wonder the poor guy’s tired; “I’m sorry, but we have our orders.”

“No—no, you can’t do this!” Sam is shifting nervously on his feet, walks toward the angels then steps compulsively backward when Uriel’s dark eyes snap to his face menacingly. “You’re angels! I mean… Aren’t you supposed to— You’re supposed to show MERCY!”

Uriel’s lips curl back and there’s nothing pleasant about it; “Says who?”

Castiel’s chin droops forward, just a fraction, “We have no choice—“

“Yes you do,” Dean’s breath is coming in quick sips, uneven and practically useless to supplying his body with oxygen, but at least it means his heart is still beating. “You always have a choice!”

Castiel looks at him, turns his head and his brows are pulled down in confusion, but there’s something… some tiny, microscopic little something in there that seems… curious.

“What, you’ve never questioned a crap order, huh?” Dean grinds his teeth. “You expect me to believe you do everything you’re ever told to do no matter how stupid it is? What are you two, just a couple’a hammers?”

“Even if you can’t understand it, have FAITH. The plan is just.”

“How could you even say that?” Sam’s hands are shaking now and Dean knows the feeling, knows the confused rage growing in his brother’s chest because it’s in his as well.

“Because it comes from heaven. That makes it just!”

“Well, it must be nice to be so sure of yourselves,” Dean grinds his teeth, narrows his eyes and feels disgust burning in his chest.

Castiel’s eyes snap to him and there—it blazes bright for a minute, but Castiel closes his eyes as if he’s afraid someone would see it. When he opens them again the light is gone, pushed deep once more; “Tell me something, Dean… When your father gave you an order, didn’t you obey?”

He did… He’d never questioned—but that was before. Before he knew better before he knew the logical decision, the easy one, wasn’t always the right one.

Castiel’s looking at him with that light in his eyes, afraid and unsure… like he wants to be told what to do because blindly following orders and not having to consider the consequences is so much easier than thinking for himself. Dean understands that, for the first two weeks after he’d come back it had been the only thing keeping him grounded, in some ways it still was. He ate because Sam ate, he tried to sleep because Sam was sleeping, he fought monsters because then he didn’t have to think about what he’d done and what had been done to him. He buried himself in the here and now so the past couldn’t find him.

Dean wants to reach out, wants to grab the angel and shake him. He wants to seek out that spark, find it and figure out exactly what it is because it’s familiar—it’s so familiar and he just—he wants to drown in it because he thinks that if he does, the world might not be such a scary place. “Well… Sorry, boys,” He folds his hands together and SQUEEZES; “Looks like your big plans have changed.”

Uriel makes a noise in his throat, it may be amusement, but to Dean it sounds like a badly tuned engine choking on the wrong mixture. “You think you can stop us?”

Dean smiles. “No,” His foot is bouncing and every so often his jaw twitches, but he pushes on, even when his heart beat hammers so quickly against his ribs it physically hurts; “But if you’re gonna smite this whole town, then you’re gonna have to smite us with it because we are not leaving.”

Uriel’s expression is somewhere between disgust and rage and Dean knows that if he’d wanted to this angel could probably pop him like a zit but he does it anyway walks right up to him and meets those dark eyes evenly, unflinchingly; “You guys are all set on the ‘Bigger picture’. Well, he went to the trouble of busting me outta hell, so, I figure I’m worth something to the man upstairs.”

Uriel’s expression doesn’t change.

“You wanna waste me? Go ahead… See how He digs that,” He’s shaking by the time he finishes and he can feel the blood in his palms, can feel Sam’s stare on the back of his neck like a laser beam.

Uriel’s teeth are perfectly straight and when he smiles it stretches a little too wide; “I’m gonna drag you out of here myself—“

“Yeah, but you’ll have to kill me… And we’re back to the same problem,” He inhales slowly, forces his voice to remain even, forces the ache in his stomach and the weird electric tingle on his skin as far back into the rear of his mind as he can, focuses only on what he has to say, what he NEEDS to say and the fact that if this guy—if Uriel really wanted him out of this place, could have done it with two fingers and Dean wouldn’t have been able to stop him. “I mean, come on… You’re gonna wipe out a whole town for one little witch? Sounds to me like you’re compensating for something… What is it, huh? Got a tiny little wingspan?” He smiles but the muscles in his face spasm and tremble so he locks it down, swallows with a great measure of difficulty and turns away with his breath held. His legs shake but he pauses as he passes Castiel, speaks low and meets those denim blue eyes with his own, finds that same guttering spark from before and speaks directly to it; “We will find that witch… and we will stop the summoning and the only one whose gonna die is her.”

Uriel’s voice is booming, like thunder again and he levels a finger at Dean; “Castiel, I—“

He lifts a palm, empty and pale and holds it out to his side; “Enough…” He doesn’t break eye contact with Dean when he speaks and that little spark doesn’t disappear; “I suggest you move quickly.”

The air punches out of Dean’s chest and for a minute he thinks he might just drop backward into the floor like a fucking starlet but Sam grabs the sleeve of his coat and pulls with a childish urgency, mutters his brother’s name and pulls again.

Dean follows.

0-0-0

It’s a mess… The seal breaks—

But they end it. The town survives to welcome a new day.

Dean doesn’t eat breakfast, instead he sits on a bench in the park and watches the snot-nosed little kids run around and laugh and throw dirt at one another and smile in a way that is not threatening, not horrible and sickening, but is sweet and gleeful and innocently content with the world—Dean thinks of his brother Pulling Samhain out of that man’s body, one hand clapped to his own forehead, blood running freely from his nose… How when they’d got back to the hotel Sam’s voice had been slurred from the pain and one pupil had been bigger than the other. He’d shaken and swallowed the pills Dean had given him and laid there in his bed in the dark, curled on his side trembling the rest of the night.

Dean wonders what kind of toll the demon’s blood is taking on Sam’s body, what kind of price is being carved piece by piece into his baby brother’s soul.

He sits there in the cool November sunlight and thinks of Djinns. Of the way Sam had smiled and pressed chaste, intimate little kisses to Jess’s lips, how proud and calm and strong he’d been in that world in Dean’s head. Dean thinks of the way Cas’s eyes had been so bright and full of mischief and life and sarcasm. Wonders if maybe the world would have been safer if he had just given in but then realizes that if he had, neither he nor Sam would be here now to save it…

He thinks of that spark he saw in the angel’s eyes the night before and how warm it had made him feel deep in that cold aching place Hell had left inside him. He squeezes his fingers together, presses in on the scabbed over cuts in his palms from the crescents of his nails and prods at that pustule of inaccessible memories in his head like a kid with a stick and a batch of frog eggs—

He’d done that once, he’d been about eight or nine, Bobby had caught him and taken the stick away, told him he was killing the frog’s babies and not to do that no more… Dean had cried himself to sleep.

In Hell he’d had a stick… But he hadn’t cared what he’d maimed with it, as long as he wasn’t the one on the pointy end.

He feels more than hears Castiel land a few feet away. The angel takes up the end of the adjacent bench and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. Dean sighs and turns to look. “Let me guess… You’re here for the ‘I told you so.’”

Castiel’s face is scrunched, contemplative. “No.”

Dean breathes out; “Good… ‘cause I’m really not that interested,” He turns back and scans the playground, jaws tight, leg jumping because he can’t exactly keep it still, can’t keep his fingers from SQUEEZING, can’t help that the little bit of pain keeps him from losing it completely.

“I am not here to judge you, Dean.”

He snorts, amused and doesn’t look at the angel. “Then why are you here?”

“Our orders—“

“Yeah-yeah, I’ve had about enough of these ‘orders’ of yours,” Dean spies a chubby kid on the jungle gym, thinks it might be that frickin Astronaut, but the hair’s wrong, so he keeps looking.

“Our orders were not to stop the summoning of Samhain.”

Dean’s breath catches in his throat and he turns slowly to look at the Angel. Stare more like it. Castiel’s still too pale, too thin looking although his vessel looks the same as it ever has. It’s the eyes… Always the eyes.  “They weren’t…” He works his tongue at the backs of his teeth; “So you guys just did all that to mess with me? Is that it?”

“Our orders, were to do whatever you told us to do.”

Dean looks at him and releases a laugh. It’s thin and hopeless and he leans over his knees to rub shaking hands on his face; “You could have mentioned that… would have made lastnight a lot easier.”

“It was a test, to see how you would perform under… battlefield conditions, you might say. You could not know what our mission was or it would have tainted your decision. Power corrupts, Dean. And we… are pure power. ”

Dean looks at him.

“The decision had to be made solely by you. Your judgment, your weapons, your call. It had to be determined if YOU would make the correct decision.”

Dean glances away and back again, twists his fingers; “It was a witch, not the Tet Offensive.”

The angel snorts and his lips curl up.

Dean stares. How the light catches on the lines of his face, highlights the dips of dimples and the curve of his mouth. It… it’s exactly how he remembers it and for a moment he gets lost in it.

Dean’s hands shake and he folds them together carefully, won’t let himself squeeze, just feels his fingers pressed alongside one another and stares out at the kids on the playground. “So… I failed your test, huh? I get it…” He curls the toes of his jostling foot in his shoe and tries to keep himself still, tries to make himself relax but can’t… just can’t. “But you wanna know somethin’?”

Castiel looks at him evenly.

“If you were to wave that magic time-traveling wand of yours… and we had to do it all over again, I’d make the same call,” He thinks maybe he sees something in Castiel’s eyes, doesn’t know how to name it but it calls to him, draws him in and he can’t look away; “There’s no such thing as ‘acceptable collateral damage’… Just death. And if you have to factor in even one innocent person in order to take out the bad guy—in my book, it’s not worth it.” He swallows, glances over at the angel and away again, “I do this to save people… I save lives, Castiel…” He swallows a lump in his throat, “It’s not easy and sometimes what I have to give up to do it sucks, but you see… I don’t know what’s gonna happen when these seals are broken. Hell, I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow! But I do know that this here?” He gestures out at the playground, the laughing screaming, dirt-throwing, booger eating, candy hungry kids and everything beyond it; “All of it… Is still here because of my brother and me… And THAT—That is worth it.”

Castiel’s head bobs slightly, nods like maybe the breeze just pushed his head around like a kite or something; “You misunderstand me, Dean… I—I’m not like you think,” He swipes the blade of his tongue over his lips; “I was… I was praying that you would choose to save the town.”

Dean’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. “You were…”

He turns, takes in every face and speaks softly, reverently; “These people, they’re all my father’s creations… They are works of art— And yet, even though you stopped Samhain, the seal was broken. We are one step closer to Hell on Earth for all creation. Now, that’s not an expression, Dean… It’s literal.”

His hands tighten between his knees and he forces himself to swallow the bitter taste in the back of his throat, winces when his stomach gives another painful twist.

Castiel looks at him and his words are not gentle; “You of all people should appreciate what that means.”

His jaw goes tight and the pain ratchets up a few notches but he breathes through it, keeps it down, won’t let himself react even though the memories seem to bubble up like puke. He wants to keep them hidden because he knows that Castiel can hear his thoughts if he lets them get out of control and the best way he can think of to control them is to not think about them.

Castiel’s eyes soften, light up just a little and he looks away, focuses on some red-headed boy climbing up the wrong end of the slide. “Can I tell you something if you promise not to tell another soul?”

Dean can hear the urgency in his voice now, it’s no longer hidden it the quick cadence of words, but is actually tinting the color of them into something uneasy. He nods.

Castiel breathes and it seems like it might actually do something other than just pass through his chest. It seems like maybe he needs it just this once. He unfolds his hands, looks at his borrowed fingers and folds them up again; “I’m not… I’m not a _hammer_ , as you say…” It’s like the words hurt, like he’s afraid to even say them aloud lest they be overheard. “I have questions… I-I have doubts.”

The static in the air is shifting, rising and falling in quick little waves and Dean realizes it feels almost like a heartbeat. Like he can feel Castiel’s pulse quickening in something like fear, if angels can even feel fear.

His prickly jaw clenches and he seems to shake, the energy he gives off shakes with him and Dean, for a second, feels crushed by it, feels like he may just be squeezed to death by it… But then Castiel speaks and the words pull that flicker in his eyes up and out and it burns itself a place in the angel’s eyes, burns itself a home and Dean knows the face of it.  “I don’t know what is right and what is wrong anymore… Whether you passed or failed here,” His lips compress.

It’s weird really, thinking that what’s bothering Castiel isn’t something incredibly deep or epic or philosophical. It’s merely the fact that he doesn’t know a definite and until that moment his whole world had been nothing but definitives. Absolutes with no exception, black and white, good and evil. And suddenly… inexplicably and against all reason there was this gray area. This single thread of unease. Castiel was afraid because there was no definitive answer to the question not that the answer itself was questionable.

Dean nods, rubs his palms on his knees. “You’ll get that.”

Castiel looks at him and he looks kind of like a lost little kid.

“Sometimes… sometimes there is no right answer, you just gotta go with your gut.”

The angel’s jaw flexes and he turns to look out over the playground, “Do you regret it, Dean?”

He turns, blinks and scratches through his jeans; “Regret what?”

“Selling your soul.”

Dean swallows and for a moment his head is filled with screaming again, he remembers that damned mask hanging above him in the school and wonders, briefly, _what if I hadn’t done it?_

Castiel’s staring at him, unblinking, watching how his hands tremble and his expression shuts down.

He swallows and turns, meets the angel’s eyes and speaks softly; “No.”

“If you hadn’t done it you would never have—“

“And my brother would be dead… Bad—HORRIBLE—things happened to me there,” His breath catches in his throat, pulls his voice high and thin; “And I did things— that I won’t EVER come to peace with, but,” He inhales slowly and swallows to steady his voice; “I don’t regret making that choice.”

Castiel looks at him, actually seems to LOOK at him instead of through him. After a moment he turns away again, looks down where his fingers are laced easily together; “Why did you do it?”

“He’s my brother… yeah, he’s made some shit decisions lately, but he's family, I love him. It—it wasn’t exactly hard.”

The angel’s eyes are blue and curious and Dean remembers looking into them and feeling love. Remembers looking into them and seeing all of eternity spread out before him in each curl and twist of color.

Castiel purses his lips and leans back a little, rests his hands on his thighs and speaks in that low empty tone that heralded the end of their conversation. “I pray then, that your love of Sam doesn’t lead you to your own further destruction.”

Dean clenches his teeth but can’t look away.

“The decisions you must make in the coming months will not be so easy. I… I don’t envy the weight that’s on your shoulders, Dean…” He inhales and lets it out, eyes filled with sympathy and doubt, “I truly don’t.”

Dean stares at him for a long time, his skin itches to touch, to just reach out and catch Castiel’s fingers with his own, simple, easy contact but he doesn’t move. He sinks his teeth into that divot in his bottom lip and flexes his hands open and closed where they’re hanging between his knees. His stomach hurts, but he nods slowly and turns to the playground with his jaw clenched, when he looks back the angel is gone.

So he sits there and waits for Sam.

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	10. Smoke 'em if You Got 'em

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters. I probably won't be back until Wednesday if things go as scheduled. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it and that I didn't ruin the whole concept.

0-0-0

Sam is good at hustling pool. He looks like one of those cocky college kids with Daddy’s credit card and he’s not that bad at pretending to be drunker than he actually is. In fact, he’s probably better at pretending to be drunk than he is at actually being drunk. Sam can get kind of mouthy after a few too many and he’s always had a mean case of hard knuckles, ever since he was a kid. Dean isn’t exactly sure how many times he’d had his nose bloodied or his lips split by Sam’s oversized fists sparing as kids. That summer Sam grew nine inches and Dad had to buy the kid new jeans because Dean’s hand-me-downs were too short in the legs, was the same summer Sam’s fist caught just right on the point of Dean’s chin and John had to smack Dean’s face a couple times to pull him back to consciousness. 

Sam could have been one hell of a boxer if he wasn’t prone to concussions every time he got his noggin rattled. Must be that stupid big brain of his. Instead he hunted monsters and hustled pool, but everyone has a hobby.

Sam took another sloppy drink of his beer and tried to coax the bald lug he’d been milking with his whole dumb frat boy act into playing one more rack. Just one more… Let me win back what you’ve already taken from me. 

Dean played his part, shuffled over and tried to put a stop to it, gave the biker a pleading look and turned his palms up. It was a familiar dance, they’d been doing it since Sam was sixteen and was tall enough and fuzzy in the face enough to pass with his fake ID. 

Sam gave his brother a Look and Dean stepped back, hung his head and grinned to himself. This poor bastard didn’t know what he’d just stepped into. 

The next thing he knew though, Sam was scrambling away from the table and Dean was out seven-hundred bucks. He followed Sam’s retreating back with wide eyes and the happy buzz in his veins from the alcohol and the prospect of wiping that poor biker asshole’s wallet clean flushed itself down the preverbal shitter. 

Ruby. Dammit. 

He could feel her smiling under that girl’s skin. Watching him with her sunken black eyes, smooth lips pulled back from her teeth. He couldn’t be around her without his nose wrinkling up, expecting the sulfuric smoke of her breath on his face. 

She smiles when she speaks Dean rolls his eyes, goads her when he can. 

Sam, poor stupid Sam, he just doesn’t get it. He’s too wrapped up in this and Dean doesn’t know how to get him to see reason. She’s a demon. Demons lie… most of the time—sometimes… When it’ll get them what they want. That’s all Dean knows. She wants something—he doesn’t know what at the moment, but Ruby wants something and whatever she says, lie or truth, it’s only to get Sam to do what she wants him to do. 

They wind up going after the girl Ruby told them about, simply because Sam won’t shut up and Dean isn’t particularly in the mood to deal with Sam being bitchy. 

Dean gives the biker at the pool tables a scathing look as they leave and is tempted to let the air out of his tires or piss on something that belongs to him, feral base instincts he shouldn’t feel the need to indulge but he does and only controls the impulse because Sam’s already got his phone out of his pocket and making calls.

Dean flips the bar off instead, vows to make Sam get the money back somehow, “I don’t care what you gotta do, Sam. That was seven-hundred bucks. SEVEN-HUNDRED BUCKS! You’re getting’ my money back.”

Sam covers the mouthpiece of his phone and gives his brother an impatient look; “What are you now, my pimp?”

Yeah, drunk Sam is a mouthy Sam. Dean mutters ‘bitch’ under his breath and turns back to the road, tries to ignore his brother talking with the hospital staff, then the police department. 

“Anna Milton is real,” Sam fetches one of his innumerable notebooks and starts scrawling under the illumination of his phone’s screen.

Dean rubs the cold from his nose; “Doesn’t mean the case is real… I wouldn’t be so averse to the idea if you hadn’t blown all our gas money back there—“

Sam rolls his eyes; “I said I’d get it back.”

“Well, your word doesn’t feed my baby, Sam.”

“We still have money—“

“It’s a three-day drive.”

“Dean,” His voice is low, warning, “We’ve driven further for less.”

Dean’s jaw tightens and his fingers curl even harder into the steering wheel. 

Sam is quiet, works his tongue against the backs of his teeth, then the alcohol gets the better of him and he turns to his brother with his nose wrinkled up; “If you’ve got something to say to me, say it.”

He shakes his head, lips pulled back like a smile but it isn’t. “Seven-hundred bucks—“

Sam’s head flops around on his shoulder and he goes limp in his seat; “Jesus, this doesn’t have a damned thing to do with the money, or the girl. You’re just pissed that Ruby threw us the tip!”

Dean snorts, loudly. It’s an ugly sound; “Right, because as far as you’re concerned that Hell Bitch is practically family and I don’t know if you realize it or not but she’s a fuckin’ demon, Sammy,” He glares, eyes lit up from within by something very near to rage; “Something major must have happened while I was downstairs, cause I come back and you’re ‘BFF’ with a goddamned DEMON.”

“I told you,” His voice has lowered, evened out, almost tired instead of exasperated like before; “She helped me go after Lilith.”

“Well, thank you for the thumbnail… Real vivid—“ He snarls as another driver forgets to flick on their low beams and reaches for the switch to his spotlight. “You wanna fill in a little detail while you’re at it?”

“Oh, so we’re swapping stories now? Okay, fine… You go first,” Sam turns and levels his gaze right at Dean. He’s not drunk enough to become violent, not drunk enough to be morose, but he’s drunk enough that he thinks it’s a perfectly good idea to open his mouth and speak, dredge up what he’s known all along and throw it at his brother like acid; “How many demons raped you in hell, Dean?”

Dean doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even turn to look at his brother. Sam’s drunk enough that he doesn’t catch the tiny shift of Dean’s hands on the steering wheel, doesn’t recognize the abrupt tension in his brother’s shoulders or the way his jaw clenches and his lower lip pulls between his teeth to stop it from quivering. 

Sam’s just drunk enough that he only sees Dean sitting there still and quiet and unwilling to speak. He shakes his head dismissively and props his elbow on the edge of the window and watches the world speed by. 

Dean doesn’t say much when they stop sometime the next morning and fill up the tank. He fishes his sunglasses out of the glove box and puts them on, pops the collar up on his jacket and turns his back to the wind. It’s raining and Sam stays hunched in the passenger seat rubbing at the headache behind his eyes. 

Dean goes in and pays for the gas, comes back out with a plastic bag of snacks and bottled water, throws it at Sam’s head as he slips behind the wheel and shucks out of his jacket, tosses it into the back over Sam’s bag so his clothes will get damp. 

Sam fishes out a bottle of water and finds some aspirin in there between the twinkies and protein bars. He swallows a couple and opens his mouth to speak but Dean flips on the radio and turns it up loud, stays hunched over the steering wheel as he pulls back onto the highway. 

Dean drives until sometime late that evening when he starts shaking his head and blinking repeatedly, widening his eyes to focus on the road. 

They don’t stop for a hotel, of course not. Dean pulls off at a fucking Wal-Mart and parks at the end of the lot away from everything else, shoves his keys into his hip pocket and slouches against the door with his arms crossed. He won’t even let Sam drive. Of course, Sam isn’t exactly sure he deserves to drive after what he’d said.

“Dean, I—“

“Shut up.”

“I want to ap—“

“Just shut up and get some rest.”

He clenches his jaw and hunches down himself, stretches his feet into the corners of the foot well and tries to find a comfortable position, gives up and crawls into the back, tosses Dean’s jacket over him and reclines his head against his bag. He doesn’t sleep immediately, lies there listening to Dean breathe, how slow and even it is at first, then how it ratchets up as he starts dreaming, he twists in his seat and mumbles, but doesn’t wake, doesn’t scream like he had before. Eventually he quiets down or Sam dozes off. 

When Sam wakes up Dean’s got his hips leaned against the hood and he’s drinking a cup of coffee. Sam has no idea where he got the coffee, unless he decided to sneak into the employee break room in the Wal-Mart and steal it. He wouldn’t put it past his big brother to do that. 

Dean eats half a twinkie and drives the rest of the morning with a hand on his stomach. 

Sam does get to drive after dinner and Dean slumps in the passenger seat with his arms around his middle. 

Sam gets first shower when they take a hotel room—finally—and when he comes out Dean’s dozed off on his bed with his jacket over his shoulder and his knees pulled up. Sam lets him sleep, pulls out his phone and sends out a few texts. 

Anna Milton’s hospital room is all in white and soft greys. It’s a bright, sterile environment and it’s not until they’re in the room and Dean’s in his suit that Sam realizes his brother’s skin is pale and there are dark circles under his eyes. 

The Psychiatrist is helpful as she can be. Meets Sam’s eyes and catalogues his responses. Maybe that’s why Dean opted not to be on point. 

Delusions, that’s what the doctor says. Schizophrenia. Anna thought demons were after her. She hands Anna’s sketchbook to Sam and he can feel the tension building in Dean’s frame as he pages through it. 

It isn’t hard to find Anna’s home address. It is however a little difficult dealing with what they find inside. 

There’s a smell inside, stale air and rot. The bodies are lying on the living room rug in pools of blood surrounded by a dusting of sulfur. 

Dean stays back rubs his fingertips against the legs of his slacks and glances around the room for anything useful. He talks, just talks, it’s easier to voice his thoughts so he has to focus solely on them instead of the other things in his head. Sam only half listens, he’s used to this now. 

“If you were religious, scared and had demons on your ass where would you go to feel safe?”

0-0-0

She’s thin, looks scared and sad when she creeps out to face them. It’s easy to believe she’s innocent, just some poor girl caught up in a war she didn’t even know was being fought. 

She talks quickly, nervously and her hands keep working like she’s reaching for something that should be there but isn’t. 

Dean sees a weird light in her eyes and he can’t look away. 

“You talk to angels?”

She blinks and shakes her head; “Oh… No, no. No way. They probably don’t even know I exist… I just—kind of overhear them.” 

“You overhear them?” Sam’s eyebrows arch toward his hairline.

“Yeah,” She smiles, like maybe it’s funny. Poor kid if she wasn’t crazy before probably is now, “They talk and sometimes I just… hear them in my head.” 

Dean swallows and lifts a hand, palm down and motions between them; “Like right now?”

“Not right this second, but a lot. And I can’t shut them out. There’s so many of them.”

Dean’s just staring at her and Sam can’t help but notice how her hair is a little greasy and lank and she has the same mark in her lower lip that Dean does from biting it so much. He doesn’t like it… Something in his chest rebels just at her proximity. There’s something not right about her, but at the same time he can’t figure out for the life of him, what it is. 

Dean squares his shoulders , “So they lock you up with a case of the crazies, when really you were just tuning in to angel radio?”

She looks like maybe she wants to hug him, nods a little and takes a deep breath; “Yes, thank you.”

A little bit of color rises to Dean’s cheeks and he stuff his hands into his pockets, looks at his feet and can’t quite look at her when he lifts his head. 

Ruby brusts in suddenly and Anna shouts, covers her mouth with both hands and staggers back, eyes wide. Dean knows the feeling, his skin’s crawling, goose flesh rising in sheets along his arms and legs and the back of his neck… Come to think of it that weird ache in his stomach is on an elevator it seems, going up and up and up and he has no idea why. He hasn’t eaten anything spicy or greasy and—

“Demon’s coming… Big-Timer,” And Ruby’s eyes lock with his.

He wants to say something sarcastic, wants to chip away at her a little more, but something… something is coming, he can feel it now, deep in his bones, a cold slow ache. “What did you do! You get some bigwig on your tail and lead him right to us!”

Ruby’s face twists and so does the one she’s stolen, she SNEERS at Dean and there is genuine disgust in her voice; “I didn’t bring him here, YOU did! He followed you from the girl’s house!”

Dean’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. 

Behind him Anna makes a little whimpering noise in her throat, hands tangled in her shirt front, eyes locked on the wall above Ruby’s head. 

Ruby rolls her eyes and pulls her lips back from her teeth, “We can fight later if you want, Dean, I’ll even let you have first swing, but the point is we have got to go. We have to get that girl out of here NOW.”

Sam’s hand tangles in the elbow of his coat, draws his attention and points to a statue in the corner. 

There is blood dripping from the Virgin Mary’s eyes. 

Dean’s heart skips in his chest, his breath catches and something in that hollow in his chest TWISTS. It rises up slowly, like a tide, inch by inch up Dean’s spine, low and monotone, a culmination of millions of screams all vibrating within an immeasurable darkness. 

Ruby says something, moves closer and there is genuine fear in her eyes. Even the dark bloody ones Dean can’t really see but can feel sitting there behind her pretty human face. 

Maybe… maybe she’s telling the truth. Maybe at this moment she wants the right thing. 

Sam moves forward, takes point and Dean hears the demon’s words right next to him, “You gotta Pull him right away.”

Dean reaches for her, grinds his teeth and shakes his head; “No… He’s not doin’ that—“

Ruby steps in close, so close he can almost smell Hell on her. “We don’t have time for you to bellyache about Sam going Dark-Side; He does his thing, he exorcises that demon, or we die. We ALL die.”

Dean swallows a bitter taste in the back of his throat and looks at his brother, watches him finger that flask in his hands and the regret in his eyes slide away into determination. He slides it back into his pocket and turns to face the door. 

It isn’t really a sound, more like an absence of sound. Spiders in the ceiling joists above their heads descend, drop from all corners and scuttle quickly toward the window, a fly or two that had been in the room zoom over as well. They start crawling and clawing at the walls and glass… only—one by one—to jerk, twist as if in agony, curl inward on themselves and drop to the ground dead. 

Dean feels it in his chest, feels the muscles in his stomach tightening, his lungs constricting, heart pumping faster and faster. It happens suddenly, a hard painful little jolt from his middle and Ruby looks at him sidelong, unimpressed. 

_Hic…_

Sam flinches but doesn’t turn away from the door.

_Hic—_

The door shatters and the walls creak and groan. 

He comes up the steps slowly, caresses the banister with his fingertips and the wood cracks, chars and blackens under his touch. He dusts his hands together and moves swiftly, but unhurriedly. 

Sam’s jaw clenches and he lifts a hand—Dean can feel the energy he’s radiating from this close. Like the blast of a bomb going off. Pushing forward in a focused sharp edge.

The Demon adjusts his collar and his eyes roll up to white—His face, why can’t Dean see his face?

The bastard coughs weakly, like he’s clearing his throat and SMILES. He shimmies his shoulders and comes up on his tiptoes a little, bats his eyes; “Ooh, that tickles.”

Sam’s hand drops and the energy fades in shock. 

The demon wags a finger at Sam and steps forward; “You don’t have the juice to take me on, Son,” His fingers curl and Sam moves—launches forward through the banister and out the door like he’s got fucking wings. 

Dean doesn’t think, can’t think—Pulls the knife and moves forward—

A hand clamps over his wrist, ratchets his arm back on the joint and the other hand goes down, grabs him by the front of the pants and the bastard’s lips pull up, so kind and forgiving; “Hello again, Dean—“

There IT is.

Dean’s mouth opens wide, flaps like a fish out of water and his knees give out. His lungs deflate and there is no air. He isn’t aware of the bastard moving, just suddenly his back is slammed hard into a support beam and he feels the knife topple from his grip, hears it clang against the floor. 

Somewhere far away Anna is screaming. Dean doesn’t know where Ruby is. 

A fist to his face, something in his nose cracks and blood gushes out both nostrils, another and the ever present cut on his inner lip from the pressure of his teeth splits. Another and his lower left canine chips, cuts into his lip—he could probably stick a ring through it if he was into that kind of thing. Might do it just to say he did—Another hit more blood—it never ends.

Hands tangle in his collar, slam his head back against solid wood and that FACE is still there. 

Dean’s hands come up, curl around his head and he can’t—he doesn’t—

“Come on, Dean… Don’t be that way. I thought we had something… Special.”

The blows keep coming and Dean doesn’t really feel them. There is only that face, those white burning eyes shot with little red veins. 

“Here… Let me remind you—“ And those cold burning hands clamp on his head, tilt his chin up and there are only those eyes. He can feel the energy building in those palms, pressing against his skin, sharpening like knives— 

Sam’s fist raises and Dean sees a flash of silver. 

Dean drops to his knees, looks up in time to see Sam plunge the knife into HIS shoulder—He doesn’t burn out though, just laughs in Sam’s face and blows a kiss at him;

“Have to try a lot harder than that, Sammy—“

Sam doesn’t stick around long enough to find out why the knife didn’t kill the bastard, he grabs Dean by the shoulders and moves. 

Jumping through a stained glass window is not by any means, Sam’s preferred mode of escaping demons. He hits hard in a roll, feels glass cutting into his back and hands, hears Dean hit in a less than optimal position and has to help his brother up. 

Dean’s bleeding and he limps, holds his left arm to his chest with his right. 

The Demon just watches them though, stands there in the window holding Ruby’s knife with a concentrated look on his face. 

Sam shoves his brother into the passenger seat and stomps on the gas. 

The hotel is clean and safe, Sam reminds himself, that’s all that matters. Clean towels, clean water, a mini-bar with plenty of booze. Sam has to get them to the hotel. He’s bleeding, it’s dripping off his hand and it’s only when he looks that he notices there’s a pretty piece of purple protruding from his bicep. Lovely. 

Dean’s head is lolling around and his breathing’s labored, wheezing. He doesn’t react when Sam calls his name. His eyes roll dizzily in his head and Sam thinks, for a second, that maybe Dean is hurt worse than he’d thought. Maybe there’s glass in his chest or stomach and he’s bleeding out under his jacket. There’s blood on his teeth and sweat on his brow. 

“Dean, answer me!”

He arches in his seat, tilts his head back and pulls in quick tiny, ripping gulps of air. 

“DAMMIT, DEAN, BREATHE!”

It doesn’t help, just causes Dean to claw at the collar of his shirt like it’s choking him. 

Sam bares his teeth, reaches over and paws at Dean’s chest looking for wounds or the lumps and dips of broken ribs. He doesn’t feel any and a quick swipe of his hand over Dean’s back proves there are no pieces of glass impaling him and it doesn’t sound like his lungs are collapsed. 

Sam turns back to the road and tries to ignore his brother’s wheezing. “You’re alright—Just—just calm the fuck down and breathe!”

It was like his brother had never seen a demon before. What the hell could have… Sam’s blood ran cold. That was it… He swallowed bile and forced himself to breathe, tried to ignore Dean cranking the window down and pressing his face into the wind, forcing himself to take in air. 

Dean’s shaking but breathing easily by the time they make it back to their room. He pulls the curtains closed and fumbles with putting down a salt line. Grumbles and hisses and limps around the room. He sees the blood on Sam’s sleeve and gags, turns and starts pacing back and forth in the bathroom. 

“Really?” Sam says through his teeth. “Now you’re squeamish?”

Dean shakes his head and flaps a hand at him, bends and spits blood into the sink. He doesn’t say anything for a while. 

He comes out of the bathroom just as Sam’s finishing with his arm, his nose is swollen and his eyes are bloodshot. His mouth doesn’t look much better and he’s still sweating, still shaking. Sam doesn’t think it’s from pain, not from his shoulder anyway, but clamps his teeth shut. Dean takes long slow pulls from a bottle of Wild Turkey and paces some more. 

Sam motions him over and steals the bottle, takes a nice sized swig himself and pours another over the gash on his arm. 

“So you lost the magic knife?” 

Sam turns and snarls back over his shoulder; “Yeah, saving your ass—Which you’re welcome for, by the way.”

Dean paces away and puts the bottle down on the table. 

“Who was that demon anyway?” He snorts, “Seems like you two were getting awful friendly—“

Dean shivers visibly and grinds his teeth. “No one good.”

Sam scoffs and reaches for the gauze, starts wrapping his arm.

“We gotta find, Anna, Sam—“

“Ruby’s got her, I’m sure she’s fine,” He takes a deep shuddering breath and forces himself up, motions with his good hand to Dean’s shoulder and jerks his chin up; “Come on, let’s get this over with.” 

Dean nods, bites his lip, nods again and braces his good arm on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know why you trust that bitch so much—“

Sam ignores him mutters; “Chin up, relax… On three—“

It’s over quick but Dean sees stars, feels the jolt of bone and stretched muscle through his chest and comes back to himself a moment later sitting on the edge of the bed with his head between his knees over the waste basket and Sam’s big hand on the back of his neck telling him over and over to breathe, just breathe. He bats Sam’s hand away and leans slowly back still cradling his arm. 

Sam exhales noisily and takes a seat beside him, continues bandaging his arm. 

Dean talks mostly to the ceiling and the ringing noise in his ears; “—You say she’s here to help, Sam… But what if she’s just using you? She could have just as likely used us to find that poor girl and brought in—brought in the big guy to kill us.” 

Sam shakes his head; “She took Anna to keep her safe.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do…”

“You’ve got an awful lot of faith in that bitch, Sam,” He levers himself up stiffly, nudges the waste basket back with his foot and climbs unsteadily to his feet. “I don’t know how you do it…We spend our whole lives hunting these things down and the minute I’m outta the picture you hop into bed with one.”

“Dean—“

“I’m not stupid… I remember her from the Astoria,” He snatches up the ice bag he left by the sink and folds it over his shoulder, “Gotta say, I thought you had better taste. What would Jess think if she—“

Sam’s face darkens, becomes something tense and murderous; “Don’t you dare bring her into this, Dean. Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Really, Sam… I’m curious—“

“She’s dead, Dean. She doesn’t think anything,” His nose is wrinkled up and the pain in his eyes is more like rage now. 

“I’m just sayin—“

“No, you’re not. You don’t know, Dean. You don’t know and I want you to shut up right now.”

“Or what?”

He breathes slowly, effects calm. “I’m not having this conversation with you when you’re drunk… I understand that you’re upset, but we’ve just gotta calm down and think here, OK? Anna is fine, we’re lucky that thing let us go and until Ruby lets us know where she is all we can do is wait and hope that demon doesn’t come after us again.”

Dean doesn’t answer, just stands there in front of the bathroom mirror and stares at himself. 

Sam can see the look in his brother’s eyes. The wary uncertainty, the outright fear. “Dean… What was that back there? Why weren’t you fighting back against that thing?”

His jaw tightened and his eyes flicked to meet Sam’s in the mirror then down to the blood in the sink. “You saw how strong he was, Sam. I tried but—“

“No, you didn’t.”

Dean’s voice dies in his throat and Sam sees him swallow mechanically a few times, fighting back nausea. 

“Just tell me why, that’s all I’m asking—You don’t have to… don’t have to give me any details. In fact, you don’t have to say anything at all, alright? Just tell me… Did you know that demon?”

He doesn’t really move, his jaws clench and his chin twitches, but he nods. 

Sam swallows his own nausea. He can see Dean’s face in the mirror, can see how hard his brother is fighting to keep himself in check and how badly he’s failing. “Okay… We’ll deal with it,” He lets his breath out slowly, continues adding pressure to his arm and looks around the room for anything to distract him, for something he can use to segue this god awful conversation; “I—uh—I think there’s some pizza left if you’re hungry.”

Dean shakes his head. 

Sam nods, “Yeah… me nether.” 

0-0-0

Ruby is back in her ‘old’ self by the time they make it to the cabin. 

It’s a rickety drafty thing in the middle of nowhere. Sam thinks it looks disgusting, Dean says it looks better than some of the dives Dad used to leave them in Before. 

Ruby answers the door, and ushers them inside then shuts it behind them. Dean keeps his distance the conversation he’d had with Sam about her still fresh in his mind.

Sam goes right for Anna, asks if she’s OK

The girl smiles and turns a kind eye to Ruby; “She’s not like other demons… She saved my life.” 

Dean tongues the backs of his teeth and takes up space against one wall. “Yeah, I hear she does that.”

The demon hiding in the woman’s skin meets Dean’s eyes but it doesn’t SMILE. Just looks at him evenly. It’s kind of looking into the eye of a snake Dean thinks, like in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones fell into that pit with all the asps and cobras and that one was just inches from his fucking face all frilled out and hissing… Only with demons instead of snakes, but you get the idea. “I guess I owe you… uh—for,” He clears his throat uncomfortably; “For Sam and—uh—yanno?”

She cocks an eyebrow. “Don’t strain yourself.”

“Okay then, moment over?”

“Please,” She rolls her eyes.

Dean lets out a relieved breath; “Good, cause that was all kinds of awkward.” 

Anna laughs a little, amused, sad maybe and turns to Sam; “You think it’d be safe to make a quick call? Just to tell my parents I’m OK? They’ve gotta be completely freaked.”

Sam’s jaw tightens and beside him Dean lets out a controlled breath. 

“What…”

Sam makes a popping noise between his lips and takes a seat beside the girl, hands on his knees; “Anna, uhm—Your parents.”

“What about them?”

“I’m sorry.”

Dean turns and looks out the window, tries not to listen but the sound of her voice goes right through him. Weird… He’s heard Sam do this with a lot of people before but it’s never hit him like this. 

And then her voice changes, her sobs become gasps of fear and when Dean turns to look at her Anna’s eyes are locked on the ceiling, wide and shining with that otherworldly light, hands up and curled and shaking all over.

“They’re coming!”

The lights flicker and brown out overhead. 

Dean points and jumps into motion; “Back room.”

Sam practically pulls Anna up by her jacket and pushes her toward the door. It’s a long shot but it’s the only one they have. 

“Where’s the knife?” Ruby’s eyes are wide, almost panicked. 

“Uh… about that—“

“You’re kidding!” Her Other face curls, snarls and reshapes itself. Dean can feel it like a weird undercurrent when he looks at her, part of his mind tells him he can see it, but all there is to look at is the angry face of some brunette chick in a leather jacket. 

“Hey, don’t look at me!” Dean shakes his head.

Sam scoffs but Dean just grins at him. There’s no amusement in it. Sam doesn’t like it, it doesn’t look like his brother at all. 

Ruby is pissed, she’s all teeth and arched eyebrows; “Great, just peachy. Impeccable timing, guys. Really.” 

The air outside is all screeches and roaring, like a tornado. Sam remembers being tucked into a motel closet once when he was about six, hidden under blankets with Dean, their Dad bracing the door shut with his feet and holding them both close as a twister had torn through the town they were stuck in. How it had screamed and shrieked like it was alive and the world had creaked and shook around him. Remembered Dean holding him close and telling him it would be OK, it would be OK. 

They’d been lucky that day, the twister had passed within thirty yards of their room, had lugged a mailbox through the windshield of the Impala and torn the roof off half the hotel, but they’d been safe, hadn’t even been scratched. Sam remembered Dad had cussed a blue streak over the car though. 

Sam didn’t know if this time they would be as lucky. Didn’t know if the demons on their way would want to torture them for hours or simply snap their necks and grab Anna. 

The cabin door banged open and the wind rushed in, roared and screamed and shook the walls.

The lights went out. 

Dean jerked in surprise when they appeared, like the last thing he’d been expecting was to see THAT familiar face. 

Uriel stepped in with his hands in his pockets, shoulders square, looking down his nose at them all. His eyes landed on Ruby and the Demon took half a step back, eyes going black in terror. 

Dean wiped his forehead with his wrist and spoke in a relieved sigh: “Please tell me you’re here to help, we’ve been having demon issues all day.”

Uriel’s lips curled up, exposing his teeth; “I can see that,” He didn’t look away from Ruby. “Want to explain why you have that… stain in the room?”

Dean looks at her, then to his brother, doesn’t really know what to say so he shrugs.

Castiel speaks carefully, in low even tones. Dean meets his eyes and finds that flicker easily now. It’s hidden, but it’s there. 

“We’re here for Anna.” 

Dean swallows, waits for the angel to continue and when he doesn’t he gives his head a shake; “What do you mean? Here for her, like ‘here for her’?”

Uriel’s lips curl up; “Stop talking.”

It’s like a noose drops over Dean’s head and tightens against his windpipe. Forget about talking, he can barely breathe. He gropes backward and catches Sam’s sleeve, squeezes it and focuses on drawing his next breath. 

Uriel’s chin lifts and he looks abysmally smug; “Give her to us.”

Sam wrinkles his nose; “Are you gonna help her?”

“No,” Castiel doesn’t even blink; “She has to die.” 

Dean’s tongue won’t move, his lips won’t unseal and spots are beginning to dance in the edges of his vision. 

Sam looks gob smacked; “Why!”

Uriel steps forward like he’s about to bat Sam to the side like some kind of gnat; “Out of the way—“

Dean remembers the way Al—HE had thrown Sam around like he was nothing and can’t imagine an angel would be any more forgiving. He forces his tongue to move, forces his lips to open and words to form, even if they come out too loud and unsteady; “Whoa! Okay… okay, I know she’s wiretapping your angel chats, or whatever, but that’s no reason to kill her!”

Uriel smiles kindly, leans forward and regards Dean like an infant in a bassinet; “Don’t worry… I’ll kill her gentle.” 

Dean finally gets a full breath in and he looks at the angels in disgust; “You’re some heartless sons-of-bitches, you know that?”

Castiel seems to have found something quite interesting on the toe of his shoes. “As a matter of fact, we are. And?” He meets Dean’s eyes then, evenly, coolly. 

Strange enough, Dean can’t help but think of His Cas leaning in close outside the professor’s office and asking if he can do other things to Dean’s balls. It’s the same tone, almost the same expression. Dean kind of wants to laugh. 

“And?” Sam shakes his head in disbelief; “Anna’s an innocent girl!”

Castiel shakes his head; “She is far from innocent.” 

Sam glances to his brother with a confused expression on his face, then looks Castiel right in the eyes; “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“It means,” Uriel’s voice has dropped half an octave, seems to rumble in the center of the earth; “She’s worse than this abomination you’ve been screwing.”

It’s fleeting, but Dean has been staring at Castiel the whole time and he sees it, FEELS it, when those blue eyes dip and his energy shrinks in like he’s hugging himself—like he’s trying to make himself small and hide from someone’s wrath. Dean remembers Castiel looking at him and admitting to his doubts, admitting that he didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore… Surely—surely he could tell how wrong this was.

He says it quietly, like he doesn’t even mean to do it. Like it’s an accident; “Cas… What are you doing?”

Uriel doesn’t even acknowledge the other angel, doesn’t even act like he’s heard Dean speak, maybe he hasn’t. Maybe he’s so bloated by his own self-importance he can’t hear the thoughts Dean’s screaming at the moment… 

But Cas can. He looks right at Dean and his jaws tighten, eyes open and his own thoughts are plainly visible, almost as if Dean can hear them in return.

_‘I don’t know.’_

“Now,” Uriel’s voice physically shakes the cabin and Dean hears that ringing again—it’s different—higher, too loud and sharp and irrevocable where Castiel’s had risen slowly like the white noise on the radio. “I’m not going to tell you again… Give us the girl.”

Dean tears his eyes away and looks to his brother, sees Sam’s throat bob as he swallows down his uncertainty, but the decision is obvious. Dean SMILES at Uriel and displays his palms; “Sorry. Get yourself another one… Try JDate.” 

What Uriel does with his mouth and his teeth isn’t a SMILE, it’s something more horrible, something Holy and Righteous and he lifts his own hands, fingers spread, palms up and Dean can FEEL the power in this guy. It’s hot and dry and smells like lightning; “Who’s gonna stop us? You two? Or this demon whore!” He grabs Ruby by the arm and THROWS her like an old shirt over his shoulder, doesn’t turn but is suddenly standing right over her, picks her up by her shirt front and looks down into her eyes so gleefully, lifts his left hand and slowly lowers it toward her face; “Don’t squirm too much… You’ll only make it worse—“

Dean swings a stake at his back, but Uriel turns, as if sensing him and the back of his hand catches Dean’s jaw, knocks him halfway across the room. 

Dean has had the misfortune of being backhanded before. It’s more humiliating than injuring and to think that he’s just been shown the back of an angel’s hand really should be more stunning than when his father had done it, but it isn’t. Dean laughs in the angel’s face and takes a swing at him, gets his fist caught in a grip like fucking steel, takes a punch to the face and goes to his knees with his bones rubbing together and Uriel standing over him with that LOOK in his eyes.

Sam is backing up slowly, hand up and out, imploring, hoping that’s enough to ward Castiel off. “Look, Cas, stop—just stop, OK?”

Castiel swallows and breathes in, “I’m sorry, Sam,” And presses two fingers to the hunter’s brow, watches as he drops over. 

Dean sees his brother go down, renews his struggles to get free from the other angel, but Uriel still has hold of his fist, is bending his arm back enough that it could break if he added much more pressure. His face is so pleased, so relieved and Dean doesn’t understand. Maybe—maybe this is it. Maybe the Guy Upstairs doesn’t need him anymore, maybe this was it and now he’s going to be beaten to death by a chubby angel and dragged back to hell.

Uriel’s eyes are shining, something dark and vengeful; “I’ve been waiting for this. You miserable scrap of—“

There’s a flash—bright, too bright and Uriel arches up and back—Dean can see the shadows of wings painted on the ceiling and walls, all sharp fighting angles and—and behind him Dean hears Castiel make a noise—a sharp gurgling inhale.

Dean turns quickly, his heart rising into his throat, hammering BOOMBOOMBOOM in his chest and sees Castiel standing by the entrance to the back room, head thrown back, wings silhouetted against the wall, untidy and somehow thinner looking than before. In all Dean’s nightmares and the horrible intervals in Hell when the demon wore Cas’s face he had never seen him in pain. Never seen him with his eyes squeezed closed and his lips parted on a silent scream or his arms wrapping tight around his middle as he doubled over—

Dean cried out in shock; “CAS!”

And then the angels were gone, as if ripped right from the fabric of reality.

Dean collapses onto his hands and knees in the floor, coughs up blood and crawls toward his brother; “Sam?” He grips his shirt and shakes him roughly; “Sam!”

He grunts, flops his head and his eyes pry open, lips pouted, almost like he was going to ask for five more minutes. 

Ruby picks herself up and Dean climbs unsteadily to his feet, bruised hand to his chest and stumbles to the door, pops it open and calls Anna’s name in shock. 

She’s barely standing and there’s blood everywhere; “Are they—are they gone?”

Dean grabs her elbowand lifts it up over her head, fumbles in his pocket for a rag, anything and applies hard pressure to the gash in her forearm. “Did you kill them?” Please—please no… Uriel was an asshole but Cas—Cas had looked at him and for a minute Dean was sure—Dean KNEW that he hadn’t wanted to do this, not really.

Anna shook her head; “No… I sent them away. Far away.” 

“How?”

She nods weakly to the mirror, nauseated by the sight of her own blood.

“That just popped in my head… I-I don’t know how I did it… I just did it.” 

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	11. Limits

0-0-0

Bobby is less than pleased by all this nonsense. He grumbles and cusses under his breath over the phone and threatens to take the price of anything they break outta their hide. Dean agrees simply to shut him up. He hopes the old man never finds out that the Winchester boys let a demon into his house.

Sam is upstairs when Dean climbs the stairs, leaning against one of Bobby’s bookshelves in the kitchen pulling at a loose thread in the cuff of his jacket. He jerks his chin up in greeting and motions over his shoulder at the rest of the house; “Where’s Bobby?”

“The Dominican,” Dean says it through his teeth and rubs his hands together.

“Is he working a job?” Sam arches an eyebrow and follows his brother toward the den.

“God I hope so. Otherwise he’s at Hedonism in a banana hammock and a trucker cap.”

Sam makes a face, like Dean’s just slapped him in the mouth with a severed, erect donkey penis and slaps a hand over his eyes; “Great, now that’s seared in my brain…” He lets out a breath.

Dean snorts and motions to the file tucked under Sam’s arm; “What’d you dig up?”

“Uh… Not much,” He rattles off facts they already know. Name, social, date of birth parents names and occupations. “But—uh… It turns out this latest psych episode wasn’t her first. When she was two and a half, she’d get hysterical anytime her dad got close. She was convinced he wasn’t her real daddy…”

Dean’s lips pulled down but his eyebrows went up; “Who was? Hmm? The plumber? Little snaking the pipes?” He grins and it almost—almost reaches his eyes.

Sam shakes his head; “Dude, you’re confusing reality with porn again.”

Dean looks at him innocently and opens his mouth to speak but Sam raises his voice and keeps going.

“Anna didn’t say, she just kept repeating that this real father of hers was mad. Very mad. Like—wanted-to-kill-her mad.”

Dean picked up the file and paged through it, found an image of Anna as a toddler with big too serious eyes and plump cherub cheeks below a shock of fire-engine-red hair all gathered into a single spike of a ponytail. Her mother, apparently, had a terrible habit of putting her in pink and orange dresses that dwarfed her small frame with bunches of frilly frilly lace. It was almost migraine inducing. He turned the picture where Sam could see and lifted his eyebrows; “Damn.”

Sam winced and shook his head.

Dean turned the picture this way and that with his nose wrinkled up; “So glad I wasn’t born a girl.”

Sam snorted and took the file away; “Alright, Curly-Top, enough. This is serious,” He turned to the pages until he found the one he’d been talking about and slapped it back into Dean’s hands. “She saw a kid’s shrink, got better and grew up normal… The notes are all there. They put her on Valium and after a few months things calmed down.”

“Until now…” Dean closed the file and dropped it onto the desk then leaned his hip against it; “So, what’s she hiding? What kicked all this off?”

Sam tilted his eyes skyward in thought and hooked his thumbs into his pockets.

“You could just ask me to my face!” Anna’s standing in the doorway with her little hands curled into fists. Her eyes are dark and wide and full of anger.

Dean flinches back but can’t not look at her.

“You have no right to go sneaking around in my life like that!”

Dean turns his eyes to Ruby where she’s leaned casually against the door jamb with her arms crossed chewing gum; “Nice job watching her.”

She snorts; “I am watching her. I watched her come out of the panic room and climb up the stairs and overhear your witty little jabs about her childhood mental illness!”

Dean’s eyes narrow and he feels a near insatiable urge to flip the demon off. “I meant, ‘make sure she stays down here’.”

“Well, then you should have been more specific, genius. I may be a demon, but I can’t read minds.”

Sam severs the tension between them easily; “No. You’re right, Anna. We’re sorry. We shouldn’t have gone looking without your permission…” He tilts his chin down and meets her eyes, gives her his sincere look. Dean’s seen it work on dozens of women his brother has tried to get information out of. “Is there anything you wanna tell us?”

Anna looks him up and down, tilts her chin into the air and crosses her arms tightly over her chest; “About what?”

“The angels said you were guilty of something… Why would they say that?”

Her shoulders sag and she’s just a scared kid again; “You tell me. Tell me why my life has been leveled— Why my parents are dead and why I can hear ANGELS talking in my head!” She shivers, pulls her lip between her teeth but to her credit doesn’t shed a tear; “I don’t know why this is happening. I don’t know, alright? I swear… I would give ANYTHING to know.”

Sam nods and meets her eyes evenly; “Okay. Then let’s find out.”

Dean volunteers. Feels strange staying in Anna’s presence, kind of like she’s looking INTO him and he can’t—can’t really take it. Pamela is indifferent on the phone, agrees to come and ‘Take a Look’ at the girl.

Dean doesn’t know whether to take it as her being funny or a slip of the tongue, so he doesn’t reply to it directly. Says he’ll be there in a few hours to pick her up.

Her house is the same save there’s now a guardrail down the steps and an iron fence around the yard. She has a large leather bag she shoves indelicately into his arms as he approaches and it feels like there’s rocks in it. She saunters by him easily, sunglasses reflecting his own astonished face back at him. “Come on, don’t wanna keep your girl waiting.”

They talk on the drive. Mostly about music. Dean avoids the angel subject aside from what he’d told her on the phone. She fingers his cassette tapes and every so often hands him one. Oddly enough she picks his favorites, then again he’s not sure why he’s surprised. She’s psychic after all.

He tries to keep his thoughts low, pushed down like he does when he’s around Castiel, but it’s difficult. Trying to purposefully not think about them automatically makes him think about them and about an hour from her house she’s giggling into her palm and he feels like a teenager caught with their first hickey.

She talks about his car, says she thinks he may be a little low on oil, or that he shouldn’t buy his gas from stations that sell entirely ethanol. “These old cars were built for fossil fuels. Ethanol is like tofu, isn’t it,” She pats the dashboard and Dean relaxes a little more.

Dean mentions the C-10 in Bobby’s garage and she says she’d like to see it. Dean feels awkward again but agrees to show it to her.

They go through a drive-thru for a late lunch/early dinner because Sam had sent him a message that said he was having canned ravioli and he’d better find a burger wrapper or something in the floorboard when Dean got back.

The house seems empty when they arrive and Pam puts a hand on the back of Dean’s shoulder while he navigates the space, points out where the bathroom is in case she needs it and lets her know they’re going to go down some uneven stairs.

Sam is sitting just inside the panic room with Anna playing cards and when he hears them coming he rocks to his feet and ducks out to meet them. Ruby stands off to the side with her own cards held under her arm.

Pamela acts subdued, diminished until Sam comes closer and lets her fingers taptaptap against his shoulders, then she tilts her face up to his, grins and grabs two handfuls of ass. “How, ya’ doin, Grumpy?”

Sam jolts in surprise and goes a miraculous shade of pink.

Hypnosis is not something to be taken lightly as it turns out.

Dean’s going to owe Bobby a few new light bulbs and a new lamp.

Anna though… Well, that’s a different story.

Pamela demands to be taken home, flat out. No exceptions. She doesn’t talk the whole drive, just sits there flaking off her nail polish with her jaw clenched.

Anna’s standing outside when Dean comes back. She’s sitting on the trunk of an old four-door Celebrity, with her arms crossed and her face turned to the stars. There’s a look in her eyes when she turns to regard Dean as he approaches that looks exactly the same as it did when he met her, but now there’s words for it, it’s some ancient sadness and despair and she looks like a completely different person.

The gravity of what she must be thinking is overwhelming and she—she just looks so tired.

Dean has seen that same expression in Castiel’s eyes and he wonders at it, wonders when they get a break or if the weight of the ages makes rest and peace impossible.

“Can I ask you something?”

She follows him with her eyes as he steps around her and climbs onto the trunk at her side.

He settles himself, pulls his jacket close and squeezes his fingers between his knees, tightens the muscles in his legs so his foot doesn’t bounce uncontrollably; “What do they want me for? Why—why did they save me?”

She smiles, but it’s not threatening, not happy. “I’m sorry… They’re not talking about it. And it was after I fell.”

He sighs and nods, squeezes his hands tighter. “That’s another one; Why would YOU do it? Why would you fall? Why would you wanna be one of us?”

“You don’t mean that.”

He snorts and his eyebrows hike high on his forehead, may decide to do some base jumping; “I don’t?” He shakes his head; “A bunch of miserable bastards running around inventing new ways to kill one another? Eating, crapping, confused, afraid, angry—“

There’s still no light in her eyes, but her smile seems genuine; “I don’t know, there’s loyalty. Forgiveness. Love.”

He looks at her like she’s crazy; “Pain.”

“Chocolate cake.”

“Guilt—“

“Sex.”

He closes his mouth so fast his teeth click and he looks away, can feel her eyes boring into the back of his head.

It’s quiet, a long, tense silence, then her little hand catches his shoulder, just above the scar and he flinches back, doesn’t want her to know it’s there. When he looks at her again there’s confusion, sympathy in her eyes.

“I mean it, Dean. Every emotion, even the bad ones… That’s why I fell. It’s why I’d give anything not to have to go back,” She breathes out, watches her breath silver in the air and disappear above their heads into the stars; “Anything.”

Dean rubbed his knuckles under his nose, dug his fingernails into his knees to keep them from bouncing and took a moment to breathe, “Feelings are overrated, if you ask me.”

“Beats being an angel.”

He stares at her with his nose wrinkled; “How is that even possible? You guys are powerful and perfect and you never have to put up with all this—“ He makes a clawing motion at his chest without realizing it. He looked away, unable to meet her eyes; “You don’t doubt yourselves, or God or ANYTHING.”

She nods, looks at her own hands, clasped like she’s praying in her lap; “Perfect… Like a marble statue. Beautiful and cold and unfeeling. No choice, no thoughts. Only obedience. Dean, do you know how many angels have actually SEEN God? Seen his face?”

He shrugs, crosses his arms and swipes his tongue over his lips; “All of you?”

Her lips purse and she draws back a little, clenches her jaw; “Four. Four angels EVER have seen him… And I’m not one of them.”

He shakes his head in disbelief; “That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then, how do you even know that there is a God?”

“We have to take it on Faith, which we’re killed if we don’t have.”

Dean stares at her, mutters a curse under his breath and can’t help but think of Cas shrinking away from Uriel at the cabin. Was that why he’d gone through with it? Was that why he’d asked Dean not to tell another soul that he doubted?

Anna tells him about being stationed on Earth, left alone with no one to talk to, no friends, nothing but her orders. How lonely she’d been, how scared and disgusted by what she saw Man doing in her father’s name… “Out on the road, sick for home… Waiting on orders from an unknowable father I can’t begin to understand,” She turns to him with such despair in her eyes; “So don’t tell me that—“

Dean chuckles, scrubs his nose again and shakes his head.

“What is so funny? Why are you laughing?”

“Nothin… sorry. It’s just—I can relate,” When he turns to look at her, the darkness in her eyes has lifted and there is curiosity again. Her head tilts a fraction to the side and he looks quickly away, clears his throat and hunches his shoulders.

Sam calls out, asks them to come back inside, that he thinks he’s found something.

Union Kentucky, sounds fitting.

“In eighty-five, there was an empty field outside of town. Six months later, there was a full grown oak. They say it looks a century old at least.”

Anna’s gaze hones in on the map, like maybe she can zoom in with laser eyes and see it on the paper. “The grace, where it hit, it could have done something like that. Easy.”

Dean’s shoulders tense and he lifts his eyes, locks them with Anna’s and speaks as casually as he could; “So, Grace Ground-Zero… it’s not destruction?”

She looks at him and smiles, she looks like a painting; “It’s pure Creation.”

He remembers clawing at dirt, choking and unable to breathe. Not knowing if he was going to be digging forever or slowly suffocate on wet earth, crushed and fighting and mindless with fear and desperation. He remembers climbing to his feet and staring around at the burned out trees, broken limbs and leaves turned to ash.

That doesn’t sound like grace to him. It doesn’t sound like what Castiel claimed. Dean feels that weird pustule of blocked off memories in his head, tries to rip into it because he knows now, something isn’t right, but the wall holds. He still has no answers.

0-0-0

The road, if you want to call it that, is in terrible disrepair. A deer path more than anything. Dean eases along with his teeth bared just waiting for that squeal of metal against stone, or for the tires to sink into the mud and begin to uselessly spin. Once or twice he’s tempted to tell Ruby to get out and push, but the Impala rumbles through.

The field is vaguely ‘P’ shaped, a wide area off to the south where it looks like there is the ruin of an old farm house. Dean sees a few rotting fence posts dotting the land here and there and disappearing into the tree line. It’s situated in a valley of sorts and stretches halfway up the downward slope of a hill. It’s filled with broom sage, various weeds and a smattering of late autumn wild flowers in shades of white pink and yellow. There are birds everywhere chattering and picking seeds from stalks of wild grains. He thinks he can identify domesticated wheat in a few places, imagines the field filled with it years and years and years ago and slowly thinning as each year passed without a harvest.

The tree is not in the center of the field, but is in the north-eastern edge of the field. For some reason Dean imagines Hobbits running around it and can’t help but think that this tree is exactly what he’d imagined reading the books all those years ago.

It’s huge. The trunk wide and fat and dusted with moss, the limbs reached up and upupup, heavy with leaves that were still somehow green even though it was November. The sun caught on them and glittered like they were made of spun glass, delicate lacy frameworks shivering in the wind.

Dean had the strange urge to climb it.

Anna approaches the tree cautiously, like it’s an animal that may be frightened by her presence and flattens her palm to the bark.

Dean expects there to be a flash of light or a rumble or something—Anything really. What happens instead is not what he’s expecting and it feels like his stomach drops out.

“It’s not here anymore… Someone took it.”

It’s too late in the evening to try traversing the trail back to civilization. Not with how overgrown the ‘road’ is. Instead, Sam unpacks their gear from the trunk and they hike the length of the clearing to the old farm house Dean had spied on their approach.

The house itself is a lost cause. The roof has collapsed and all the windows are broken out. The barn however, still stands. Sam finds a couple old kerosene lanterns in the back, inspects them with his flashlight and tells the others to stand back while he attempts to light them. It works, gives the space a little illumination anyway.

Anna moves away from the group. Sits on what had at one time been a work table just inside the doors and draws her knees to her chest, curls her fingers around her ankles and stares out across the length of the field at the tree with a distant look in her eyes.

Ruby leans against a stall door and watches her with her arms crossed, passes Sam poignant looks that make Dean feel very uncomfortable and the sun sinks below the trees.

Dean starts talking. Sam watches him as he paces, moves things around, starts finding things to compulsively organize. His hands are shaking and the words coming out of his mouth sometimes don’t make any sense. He starts with questioning the safety of the barn, grabs support beams with both hands and throws his weight against them. When the structure doesn’t fall on his head he moves on to warding the place. Describes the symbols Bobby had drawn when they’d summoned Castiel and starts looking for something to paint them with.

“Uh, hello!” Ruby waved her hand in the air; “What are you trying to do exactly?”

Dean gives up on that. Goes through his pockets and pops a couple Rolaids, chews them noisily and makes disgusted noises about their flavor.

Sam asks him to sit down, but Dean doesn’t seem to hear him. He just keeps pacing, right hand on his stomach. He finds his hex-bag in the pocket of his jacket and takes a deep breath. Says that they’ve still got them, that they should all head back to Bobby’s panic room where they’ll be safe.

Ruby shakes her head; “What, forever?”

Dean doesn’t even hear her this time and the demon turns to Sam with her nose wrinkled up and jerks a finger at Dean.

Sam’s taken a seat on the remnants of an old milking stool and is busy cleaning his gun; “Just let him go… He’s thinking aloud,” He blows some grit out of the magazine; “He’s nervous.”

Ruby throws up her hands; “Oh, well that’s fantastic. Captian Chatterbox over there’s having a nervous break-down! Anna’s grace is GONE and we are now the fucking Ar-em-ess Titanic of lost causes!”

“Ruby—“

“No! You can’t fight Heaven AND Hell! One, maybe. But both of them at once? No. Not gonna happen.”

“We’ll figure it out—“

“How!” Ruby steps in close and tilts her chin up at Sam, lowers her voice so that she can barely be heard over Dean’s ‘thinking’. “How do you expect to stop this, Sam? You saw what happened back at that church. Do you really expect to go up against Alastair again without any kind of weapon and win?”

Sam’s voice dips down and he doesn’t look at her when he speaks, locks his eyes on Anna where her head has cocked to the side and her lips have fallen open; “I told you. I can’t.”

Ruby nods, rocks back on her heels and walks slowly backward away from him; “Yeah… And now we’re all gonna die.”

“Guys?” Anna’s voice rings like a bell. Dean’s voice cuts off mid-sentence and he turns to look at her as if hypnotized.

She inhales shakily and doesn’t blink; “The angels are talking again…”

Sam welcomes the distraction, steps closer and puts a hand on her shoulder. “What are they saying?”

Her fingers tap against her ankles, like she’s counting; “It’s weird… Like a recording. A loop… It says; ‘Dean Winchester gives us Anna by midnight, or—‘” Only her eyes turn to look at them… look right at Dean. “’or we hurl him back to damnation.’”

Sam turns and catches the look on his brother’s face. Dean has a rusted oil can in his hands and there is a line of them on a shelf nearby all equal finger-widths apart. Dean’s face is slack, almost calm, but his hands are shaking—SQUEEZING the rusted metal between his fingers until his nails turn back.

Sam has to force himself to look away, to turn back to the girl beside him. He speaks slowly, carefully. Tries to keep his voice even and calm but inside he’s boiling; “Anna, do you know of any weapon that works on an angel?”

“What, to kill them?”

Sam gives her a serious look.

Her head shakes; “Not anything we could get to, not right now.”

Dean’s voice cracks; “Okay, wait… I-I say we call Bobby, we get him back from Hedonism—“

Sam snaps, he turns and rises to his full height and looms over his brother. “And what exactly is Bobby going to tell us that we don’t already know? We don’t have time, Dean. We are out of time.”

Dean swallows, or at least tries to, his Adam’s apple bobs repeatedly, convulsively and he turns, carefully slides the oil can he’d been bending back onto the shelf and walks out the door.

Sam’s breath comes out in a whoosh and he moves to go after him but Anna’s little hand comes up, presses into his chest and she speaks; “I’ll do it… You—I’ll get him,” She slides off the table and jogs off into the night after Dean.

She finds him deep in the trees to the west, one hand bracing himself up against a birch, the other on his knee, his whole body shaking with unproductive dry heaves. She doesn’t get close, just calls out to him when he goes quiet to breathe and asks if he’s OK.

“Peachy,” He spits, chokes on a laugh, “I can’t even puke right.”

She crosses her arms against the chill and tries not to look at him, tries to preserve his dignity that much at least and let him empty his stomach in peace. She finds what looks like the axel of an old tractor about a dozen feet away and sits on it, tries to make herself comfortable and a few minutes later Dean comes to join her, sits as far from her as he can considering, teeth crunching up more of his antacids.

“Mind if I bum one of those?”

He shakes his head and holds out the tube, doesn’t look at her.

It’s quiet, an owl calls in the distance and some furry little creature scuttles over the dry leaves far enough behind them that it sounds enormous.

Anna hugs her knees to her chest; “Maybe everything’s gone wrong because I just don’t deserve to be saved.”

“Don’t say that—“

“I disobeyed, Dean… Lucifer disobeyed—“

“Well Lucifer also wants to destroy the world from what I hear… You just wanna live in it.”

“What do they say about good intentions.”

He looks away, rubs his hands on his knees.

“What I want doesn’t matter, only what I did. And I did it willingly. I knew it was wrong and I did it anyway… Now I have to pay for that.”

“We’ve all done things we have to pay for.”

She says it. Just says it because it’s the truth and there’s no easy way to do it; “I know about what you did in Hell.”

He stops breathing and radiates complete tension like he expects to be struck down.

“They were talking about it about a week ago… and I just want you to know that it wasn’t your fault,” She looks at him, the hunch of his shoulders against the blackness, the tension in his jaw and the way his hands shake where he’s squeezing his fingers between his knees. “You’re not unbreakable, Dean. You’re beautiful and flawed and perfectly human—Anyone would have done what you did eventually. They all do. It’s Hell, you don’t see it without it looking back into you. You don’t experience it without experiencing change,” She shifts closer slowly, hesitantly works her arms around him and leans her head into the back of his shoulder; “It’s not your fault… You need to forgive yourself or this—this second chance you’ve been given will just turn into another Hell and you don’t deserve that.”

She hears his breath hitch, feels the vibration of it running through him, can hear his heart beating too quick through his skin. She doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t expect him to say anything in return, just presses her cheek into his back and shifts with him when he starts rocking, trying to keep everything pressed back and can’t.

0-0-0

Ruby is gone when Dean and Anna come back. Dean won’t meet his brother’s eyes and heads immediately toward the back of the barn so Sam can’t see the bloodshot inflamed appearance of his eyes and the redness of his face. Anna asks where Ruby went but Sam doesn’t answer right away, watches Dean’s back as he jogs up the staircase into the workshop part of the barn and disappears.

Sam turns back to Anna and says that it’s not important right now, that she should try and get some sleep.

Dean has already rolled himself up in his sleeping bag like a caterpillar but Anna can smell the liquor as she passes by, settles onto her own makeshift bed in the corner where she would be safest in case of attack.

Sam stays down stairs, pages through books he’d had in his pack about Angels and thinking. Anna swears she can smell the gears in his head smoking.

Dean speaks around eleven fifty, must have been staring at his watch, Anna’s been looking at the wheel of stars visible through a crack in the roof and doing equations in her head, figures it’s almost midnight.

“Anna?”

She turns and regards him through the darkness. “Yes?”

“You—you’ve had sex before, right? I mean… There isn’t the potential of you dying a virgin… is there?” He can’t help but think of that poor girl from Before. “And I don’t mean one-miniute-wonder sex… I mean, like—“

She huffs out a breath and to Dean it sounds amused. “I spent two years at college, Dean. What do you think?”

He shrugs; “It’s a choice isn’t it?”

“Yes, Dean. I’ve had satisfying sex before… Very-very satisfying sex.”

He hums in acknowledgement, maybe a little relief.

“I mean, mind-blowing sex.”

“Okay, now you’re just bragging.”

She giggles and it’s such a human, innocent sound Dean can’t help but smile back.

“What about you, huh?” She rolls onto her stomach and props her chin on her arms; “I mean, this could be my last night on earth…”

His breath hitches and she can see his face in a bar of light slanting through the gap between two boards in the wall. His eyes are wet—look like they’ve been that way for a while. She says his name softly, trying to draw him back. “I was just kidding, you know—“

“I would,” He speaks in a whisper, flicks his tongue nervously over his lips; “If I could, I would.”

“Oh—“

“It’s not… well,” He swallows again and presents his back; “Nevermind. It doesn’t matter. It’s pointless.”

She’s quiet for a few seconds and when she speaks he can barely hear her; “Is this about Castiel?”

He stiffens, goes still like stone. “What?”

“Is it about what happened when he brought you back?”

He moves quickly, rolls onto his back and levers himself up to stare at her; “What happened when he brought me back?”

Her face is scrunched, confused; “I don’t know exactly… They’ve never said. They just mentioned something happening when Castiel tried to put you back into your body. They hushed up about it really quickly, I thought—You mean, you don’t know?”

Sam chooses that moment to lumber in, settles himself between them and says they should rest, that tomorrow’s going to be tense and the rest of the conversation is silence.

0-0-0

Ruby isn’t back in the morning. Sam is visibly worried. Paces and rubs his hands together and makes repetitive popping noises with his lips.

Dean gets annoyed quickly and downs half the contents of his flask. He’s been awake since a little after four, had woken with Sam bending over him, shaking him and visions of Uriel gleefully throwing him back into the pit still BURNING behind his eyes, the angel’s WORDS still ringing in his head like church bells.

_“Give me the girl… Or I will send your brother to the deepest Pit in Hell.”_

How Anna had slept through the noise he must have made Dean will never know.

Sam sat up with him, kept a hand on the back of Dean’s neck while he struggled to remember how to breathe and neither one of them had drifted back off.

Dean’s hands are shaking as he tilts the flask to his lips again, wishes he’d thought to bring the bottle. His stomach hurts—like there’s a fist lodged deep in there under his ribs, TWISTING. It’s taking everything he’s got not to bow over it.

Anna comes down from the workshop finger-combing her hair at a little after nine. She doesn’t look like she missed even a wink of sleep. Wide eyed and bushy tailed. Dean envies her and gives his brother a weary look.

They appear without so much as a gust of wind to foretell their landing. Dean expected as much. The doors burst open and there they are, walking in with their mouths compressed purposefully.

Castiel looks just about as bad as Dean feels, there’s something about his expression, something closed off, disappointed maybe but it’s so well hidden Dean can’t find it in the blue of his eyes… He thinks that may be best because if he’d been able to see it he—he doesn’t know what he may have done. He’s reached an end here, can’t take much more without cracking clean in two and he’s tired—so tired of hiding it.

Sam has a hand out, shielding Anna with the height and breadth and thickness of his body. Dean can feel a strange aura around his brother, like crackling electricity—like heat coming off a hot stove. “How the hell did you find us!”

Castiel’s eyes move, light on Dean and stay there, bore into him and it is physically painful. Makes that something in Dean’s stomach TWIST in like a corkscrew and he wonders when it’s going to be wrenched free and all this—THIS inside him will finally be drained away.

Sam turns and looks at him agape. Stares like he doesn’t know who Dean is anymore. Like Dean is repulsive—inhuman.

_Scum of the earth, yeah, that’s me._

Dean doesn’t look at him, withers under his brother’s gaze and looks to Anna instead, meets her eyes and his lips move, form words he doesn’t have the strength to say aloud; “I’m sorry…”

Sam shoves him. Slams both hands into Dean’s chest and sends his brother sprawling.

“What did you do! How—how could you! What the hell could be worth selling out an innocent girl!”

Dean looks up, lifts his chin for a punch and closes his eyes, accepts it but when it doesn’t fall he opens his eyes to ask for it—sees Anna standing there over him, between them with her arms spread like wings.

“You—“ She says it calmly, easily; “He did it because they gave him the choice—they either kill me… or send you to hell.”

Sam’s jaw drops and his breath punches out of his chest. He almost drops, his knees wobble but Anna presses his face between her hands and forces him to look at her, not at is brother. “Don’t do this— Don’t make this any harder on him than it already is.”

Sam sucks in a breath that sounds like a sob in reverse and squeezes his eyes shut, grinds his teeth and bows his head.

Anna releases him and turns, drops to her knees beside Dean and pulls him up, wraps her arms around his shoulders and presses her lips into his hair; “You did the best you could…” She leans back, catches his jaw and draws him in, breathes the words into the skin of his brow; “I forgive you…”

She stands and takes two steps forward, waits until she hears Sam pull his brother up and just as she’s opening her mouth there’s a sound from the back of the barn, like the ripping of sack cloth and the room is filled with the smell of hellfire.

The next two minutes are like something from a western film. Like the stand-off at the OK Corral.

Dean doesn’t feel much until Sam pushes him bodily into the corner with Anna and stands there with his arms spread wide in an effort to protect them. He speaks carefully over his shoulder at them; “Whatever happens next, don’t move unless I tell you to.”

Dean’s skin crawls when Alastair speaks and he sags back against the wall. It’s a weird sensation, to suddenly not really care what’s happening. Maybe he’s in shock, maybe he’s drunk. Dean isn’t sure. Maybe he should know better by now that drinking scotch on an empty stomach is a bad idea. Maybe coming to terms with the idea that he was going to let the angels kill Anna to save his brother from Hell was just too—too jarring for him to handle.

If it had been simple as ‘give me the girl or I’ll throw you back in the pit’ Dean would have gone. He probably deserved to be down there anyway, maybe he’d be lucky and if he came back a demon Sam would just stab him with the magic knife instead of trying to Pull him.

Then there was a crash and the whole barn lurched. Dean saw Uriel pinning a demon to the splintered support beam across the room from them, slowly lowering his hand to the demon’s face and Castiel—

Castiel was bitch slapping Alastair.

It was strangely wonderful to see, to imagine the angel wasn’t an angel, was just Cas, His Cas. Kicking ass and taking names. He imagined that the angel had been his Cas all along. Imagined Alastair wearing Cas’s face and pinning him down—SMILING—

Castiel’s hand flattened to the Demon’s forehead and Dean couldn’t look away, imagined the demon burning out. Imagined himself being able to sleep at night without having to worry if those white eyes would be looming over him when he woke—

Alastair laughed, “Sorry, kiddo. Why don’t you run home to Daddy?” And he struck Castiel with both palms flat on his chest, knocked him back hard and when he hit the ground he slid backward with his face screwed up in rage/pain, but Alistair descended on him like a fog, straddled his chest and wrapped one hand around the angel’s throat, the other he pressed into his forehead.

“Potestas inferna, mi confirma!”

Castiel’s eyes widen and Dean sees the fear in them blaze brightly, like all the stars in all the galaxies have gathered there and are fighting to get out and the angel begins to squirm, trying to free himself, but Alastair grips tighter, seems to swell and the barn shakes—the smell of hellfire rises and Dean could feel the growing power in the demon like an ache in his bones.

His body reacted on instinct, either from fear or remembered trauma he didn’t know, but the hiccups returned, painful hard shocks from his middle that squeezed his stomach and made acid burn up the back of his throat. Castiel’s eyes were wide now, terrified and he was practically thrashing. Alastair was pressing his head down into the dirt—harder and harder and harder—

That aching Something in Dean’s chest screams. A long shredding noise and Dean doesn’t think, gropes behind him and his fingers close over a heavy, cold—

Sam stumbles and turns his head in shock when Dean shoves past him but he can’t stop his brother, can’t do anything but watch as Dean moves forward with his face twisted up into something familiar, all confidence and rage and protectiveness—

Dean shouts and there is no fear in his voice; “GET AWAY FROM HIM!”

Alastair’s skull gives a satisfying CRUNCH when he swings and the demon lurches back with his hands over his face, there is blood everywhere and when he finally stops stumbling and peers out with white eyes and lowers his hands, there is a gaping blood rent in his face and his nose is only hanging on by scraps of skin and pulverized cartilage. The flesh is peeled back across his cheek and upper lip to reveal the bone and quivering, hemorrhaging tissue beneath. Most of his front teeth are missing or broken and his chin is torn open, jaw fractured right down the middle, flapping grotesquely like something out of a zombie flick. He straightens himself and what’s left of his face pulls back into something dark. His tongue moves in his ruined mouth but the words come out clearly, a groaning, burning, hissing sound that echoes in Dean’s chest and his very bones. It isn’t until that moment that Dean realizes what he’s done and it takes everything he’s got not to drop to his knees. He stands there over Castiel with the pry bar in his hands like a sword. The bloody crook pointed at the demon and hungry for more even as Dean’s hands shake where he’s gripping it. The iron feels hot in his hands and the blood dripping from the end is sizzling.

At this moment—in this instant, Dean knows that if Alastair comes forward again he’ll swing for the fences, even if he is scared half to death.

“Dean, Dean-Dean-Dean…” Alastair’s shakes one blood covered finger at him but doesn’t move forward, He’s staring at Dean’s chest, then his hands, and back to his face. “As thrilled as I am at this new… development. I must say, I’m perplexed…”

Dean can see his true face now, through the ruin of his stolen human one and together they make something even more grotesque. Dean’s jaws clench and his knees shake, but he stands his ground.

“I thought we had something, you and I… Something GREAT… But, you disappoint me. You had such potential, such promise. We could have been something beautiful together,” He moves suddenly, flicks his wrists with his fingers splayed and dripping ichor and Dean feels a cold icy burning hand push INININININININ and wrap around his lungs and heart and stomach all in one gigantic fist, clawing and pulling like it’s searching for something. Dean sees Sam buckle as well clutching his neck, eyes wide and bulging in pain. The pry bar falls to the dirt and Dean drops with it, arms around his stomach, spots dancing in the edges of his vision.

Across the room Uriel presses his hand to the last black-eye’s brow and snuffs him out in a blaze of amber light.

Dean sees Anna from the corner of his eye. She lunges forward from where she’d been hiding and wraps her little hand around something blue-white dangling around Uriel’s neck, gives it a mighty YANK and sprints away.

Uriel grabs at her, catches her jacket with a roar but she twists—twirls on her toes, swift and graceful. Spins right out of her coat, takes two steps and throws the glowing THING down at her feet.

It’s like a shockwave rocks the earth. The barn shakes and the windows shatter outward and Dean is knocked backward into a wall. Sam goes flying as well and Alastair turns, his focus broken and snarls with his ruined face—Lunges at her—and is knocked back by a second blast as the blue-white light flows upward like smoke, like it’s alive and thinking and forces itself into Anna’s gasping mouth—up her nose, flows in and in and ininininin and lights her up from the inside like Christmas.

Brighter and brighter like a sun has sparked into life in her stomach, Dean can see her bones illuminated through her skin, the red flutter of her heart, a delicate little chain around her neck with silver ballet slippers and a letter ‘A’ on it. Dean can see all of it and she’s burning so bright his brain can’t compute the sheer purity of it and all it does is HURT. Her voice hitches, comes out on a sob but Dean can’t look away even when she’s screaming for him to he can’t help but stare. It’s only because the sound of it is like the screech Pam had released when Castiel burned her eyes from her head that he comes to himself and pulls is arms over his face, closes his eyes and waits for it to be over.

The barn rattles and groans and when silence reigns Dean pries his eyes open and stares out sightlessly. Anna is gone… and there’s a smear of sulfur and ash where Alastair was a moment ago. It’s not the right combination or amount that means the bastard is dead… All it tells Dean is that Alastair left the building, fled most likely… And he’ll be around tomorrow, or sometime soon, he can feel it.

Dean’s limbs shake and Sam grabs him roughly by the shoulders and hauls him up, stares at him with apologies written across his face. “Dean—“ He swallows, “Dean, I didn’t—“

Dean looks away, turns his head and focuses on the opposite wall with his jaw tight and his hands curled into defensive fists between them. Sam releases him slowly, watches how his brother curls in on himself, hunches his shoulders forward and wraps an arm around his stomach, the other is shaking, nails biting into his palms.

When Sam turns the angels are staring at them, or Uriel is. Castiel’s eyes are locked on Dean and there’s a weird expression on his face, something like confusion mixed with gratitude and sadness… so much sadness.

Uriel’s lips pulled back from his teeth and his hand shot forward—aimed for Dean’s neck but Castiel was faster, grabbed the other angel’s wrist and squeezed in a threatening manner.

Something was said through their brief contact. It wasn’t audible, wasn’t even shared through eye contact, but it was said loudly enough that Uriel stands down, wrinkles his nose at the Winchesters in disgust, stepped back with his teeth still exposed and was gone with a sound like sheets flapping in the wind.

Castiel remained. Stood there silently, staring; “Dean—“

He doesn’t reply, just curls his fingernails into his left shoulder over the scar and shakes his head.

Castiel inhales deeply and lets it out, purses his lips and is gone in a rush of wings.

0-0-0

Sam stops the car on the side of the road, taps his fingers against the steering wheel and finally cuts the engine.

Dean looks at him but doesn’t say anything, even when Sam gets out and comes around to the passenger door, pulls it open and jerks his thumb over his shoulders; “Come on, Dean. Let’s go. Let’s get this over with.”

He climbs out stiffly, leans against the fender and looks at his brother with a tired expression on his pale face; “What?”

Sam holds his arms out then motions to his face; “Come on, do it. Hit me, I deserve it.”

Dean shakes his head.

“I didn’t know, alright?” Sam’s voice is defensive. “I didn’t know they talked to you after midnight… I—I thought you would have—“

“Would have what? Caved in as soon as they mentioned throwing me back in?”

Sam’s hands fall to his sides, shoulders loose and defeated. “It’s Hell! Who—who would want to go back there! Who wouldn’t do ANYTHING not to go back there!”

Dean’s teeth clenched and he hesitated, words hanging in the back of his throat, choking him before he finally coughed them out; “It doesn’t matter. It’s pointless. Can we just go?”

Sam’s hands come up in shock, one on his forehead the other motioning at Dean’s chest; “This is it! This is—Do you even HEAR yourself!” He paces back and forth two steps one way, two back. “You’re talking about HELL, Dean! You would go back there? Is that what you want? Do you WANT to go back?”

He doesn’t reply, looks away, unable to meet Sam’s eyes. “Sold my soul to get there, didn’t I?”

“NO. No,” Sam slices a hand through the air and has to turn away for a minute to breathe; “Don’t even think that. You—You don’t deserve Hell, Dean. You don’t. You’ve done nothing to deserve it EVER! You’ve always been there for me any time I needed you— You’re a good person, Dean. You do NOT deserve to go to hell. Never did, never will!”

Dean shifts his weight on his feet and stares down the road like he’s bored. “Okay… can we go now?”

Sam’s shoulders slump and he looks so lost for a moment. “Would you just—just talk to me?”

“About what, Sam?”

“I don’t know—Just-just stop lying about it for one!”

“What does it matter if I’m lying or not? Me saying I remember is not gonna make what’s stuck up here any easier to deal with!” He jabs himself in the temple with the end of his finger, then curls his hand into a fist and thumps himself lightly as well, like he wants to just reach in there and scrape out his brains with his bare hands to make it stop. His face scrunches up and he looks away again.

Sam’s vision swims and he swipes angrily at his eyes with the flat of his palm. “I—I don’t want to see you—see you hurting like this anymore. I’d do anything to stop it. Anything.”

“Is that why you didn’t tell me about your plan back there? Is that why you allowed me believe I’d let another innocent person die because I’m weak?”

Sam’s lips seal and his chin bows toward his chest. He breathes in and out; “I was trying to protect you—“

“Yeah?” He narrows his eyes, “Well, don’t,” He breathes, looks away to gather himself, then back to his brother, “You can’t help me. You don’t get it… I pray you never get it, Sammy,” That darkness he’s tried so hard the past few weeks to keep hidden is all there in his eyes, all naked and alive for Sam to see. “Things happened there—Things happened to me that I don’t ever want to remember but I will NEVER be able to forget and I can’t—I can’t put that weight on you too.”

Sam swallows, takes a shuddering breath and his mouth feels so dry, but he says it anyway because he can’t keep carrying this fear around inside him, can’t keep pretending he doesn’t see it;

“I know he raped you, Dean.”

And Dean laughs, looks right at him and LAUGHS like it’s the fucking funniest thing in the world. “Rape? You—you think THAT’s the worst thing he did to me?” His eyes are filled and running over but it’s just so goddamned funny; “I wish! Jesus Christ I wish that was the worst thing he did—“ He looks away and chokes on his own words, tries to force them down again and again and again—but he just—he can’t.

Sam doesn’t say anything, just stares at him with his mouth hanging open and listens.

It doesn’t help. Dean feels worse when he’s done talking than he has since the Hellhounds tore him open and dragged him away because now he’s here. He’s home and ‘safe’ and has a second chance but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because he can’t forgive himself for it, not ever and he’ll carry that weight with him for the rest of eternity.

He wonders, briefly, what kind of horror he had presented when Castiel swooped down and plucked him from the pit. Like some angelic crane machine. He wonders if the angel can see it in his face like Dean does when Demons look at him and their eyes change.

He wonders when he’ll look in the mirror and see the face looking back is the one Hell carved for him.

Sam moves forward and catches him around the chest, tries to hide his face in Dean’s shoulder but Dean pushes him away roughly with a wild look in his watering eyes. He points vaguely at Sam’s chin and his lips curl up, trying to effect calm, but it just looks like that WRONG smile Dean had worn back at the cabin and something in Sam’s chest twists because he knows they can’t go back. Nothing will be the same after this. Nothing can ever be the same again.

“Don’t,” Dean’s breath shakes. He wants it, wants to just be wrapped up in strong arms and—and fucking groundedrestrainedprotectedHELD because he feels like he’s flying apart at the seams, but right now he just feels too damned MUCH and the contact makes his stomach churn. “Just don’t—” He breathes in, his hand opening slowly, trembling, so Sam understands that he isn’t angry, just can’t deal with everything right now and needs space. The air catches in his chest and he turns his head away. “Don’t touch me.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	12. Delusions of Grandeur

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 0-0-0  
> Okay, some explanation this chapter. First off, ‘The Solstice Moon’ mentioned in “Death Takes a Holiday” is in debate on the Superwiki. The timeline argues that the episode in question has to take place between December 19th and 22nd. Well, I cry bullshit because the ‘Solstice Moon’ is the full moon closest to but no more than three days before the actual solstice. I grew up on a farm, I know these things. The solstice moon can fall on the night of the solstice, but not before it by any more than three days. In 2008 the closest full moon on the calendar is the 14th of December, BUT, that’s more than three days before and therefore doesn’t count. The Solstice Moon would therefore have to fall on January Twelfth, which coincides with the date mentioned in Cole’s obituary AND accounts for the fact there are absolutely no Christmas decorations on any of the houses in what is likely a Christian predominated town.  
> There was no full moon on the winter solstice in 2008, therefore that CANNOT be the time during which the episode takes place!  
> Sorry, but I had to say it!  
> Rant over…
> 
> Secondly, you might notice something different and I want you to keep in mind, I did tell you this was AU and would begin to branch away from canon bit by bit. This is the first big change you’ll encounter and I hope I articulated why it was made well enough that it doesn’t ruin the story.  
> 0-0-0

0-0-0

They come nightly.

Sometimes Sam wakes up in time to say his brother’s name, sit up and put a hand on his foot, shake his leg enough that Dean wakes up. Other times, Sam sleeps through them. He only knows they happen because he never sees Dean go to bed and never sees him wake up unless he’s the one to wake him. But, the sheets are always untidy and Dean hasn’t collapsed yet—not for lack of his body trying. Dean’s drinking four and five cups of coffee a morning, not to mention what he has instead of lunch.

What little weight he’d put on since the beginning of October is gone, has taken a few more pounds with it. He looks thin and that’s saying something. Dean’s never been skinny—not even while he’d been going through puberty and had been nothing but knobby knees and long limbs. But now—now he looks almost wasted.

Sam watches him from the corners of his eyes when Dean gets dressed. How when his arms are over his head while he’s pulling on a t-shirt, or pulling one off, Sam can see his ribs moving under his skin, or the notches of his spine when he bends over. The dry rashes from too much soap in the creases of his skin.

Dean’s watch seems to hang on his wrist and he’s stopped wearing his ring because it won’t stay on his finger anymore. Has hooked it on the cord holding the amulet around his neck.

There are bruises on his legs—Sam’s been caught looking enough that Dean has started sleeping in his jeans, and the scratches on his left wrist and shoulder get hidden under his shirts.

Sam tries to explain it away, tries to tell himself that his brother isn’t slipping back, but it’s kind of hard to do when he can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen his brother eat something this week and that there’s a big ZERO in the column he has to tally how many times Dean laughs at something.

They go through cases quickly. Four of them in two weeks and Dean barely speaks, barely eats, barely sleeps.

It’s like he isn’t even really there, just a memory playing itself out. Sam feels just as lonely as he had in the four months Dean had been in hell. 

Sam spends what time he’s not working on a case looking up his brother’s symptoms online, trying to find something, some therapy or exercise or medicine that will help. But there isn’t anything. Not really. He finds a few herbs and things that claim to help with anxiety and sleep disorders. Sam picks up a few, tries one himself, but the effects are minimal at best.

Maybe it’s the feral children in Stratton, or something in the magician’s eyes in Sioux City, but Sam gets scared… Worries that something will happen and Dean will just decide that it’s all too much. That it isn’t worth it.

There had been a moment in Sioux City, when Dean had been hanging there above the stage with his fingers scratching at the noose around his neck where it looked like—like maybe he just didn’t want to keep fighting.

So, Sam had handed Dean one of the herb bottles and told him to take them—Had refused to accept Dean’s stoic ‘NO’ and said words that hurt—

“You’re letting me down, Dean… I-I can’t keep worrying if you’re going to off yourself or just stop fighting when I need you to watch my back. Right now—Right now I don’t trust you enough to hunt with you and if you don’t do something to help yourself get out of this—this HOLE you’re in, you’re effectively putting my life on the line.”

Dean had taken the pills, choked down two of them every night and one at lunch. It didn’t help, Sam could tell it didn’t help, but Dean pretended it did. Made an effort to at least fake it again, Sam could have almost believed it in Fairfax, but their luck has never been what you would call the best and Sam should have known that from the beginning, but he was blinded by his own desire to believe everything would be OK if he couldn’t see it, if he didn’t notice it.

Sam wanted to do Christmas. Wanted to steal some dinky little plastic tree from someone’s over-decorated yard and wrap gas station goodies in the wrinkled damp pages of newspaper from the back seat. Wanted to see Dean smile again like he had before Hell… But they didn’t. Instead they saved a family of five from ‘Sugar Plum Fairies’. Adolescent Hobgoblins in Barbie clothes that very nearly killed everyone in the house, Sam and Dean included, when they started a massive gas leak.

They dropped in on Bobby for one night, long enough for Dean to replace the exhaust system on the Impala and make sure the brake lines were intact for the coming months of road salt and freezing wet, then they headed west again. A little town in northern California with a nasty Shifter problem… Turns out there were three of them. Two, Dave and Loraine, they weren’t really that bad, made porn for a living—Raunchy, bendy, weird, ohmygodthat’skinkyashell **PORN** —wearing different faces, but they didn’t cause trouble. They were two consenting adults, nobody could stop them. The third though was a stranger into kidnapping young girls, shifting into Dave and recording himself raping them, then slicing and dicing them alive and leaving them naked in dumpsters. Effectively framing Dave for murder.

It actually took Dave and Loraine’s help to catch the creep. They shifted themselves into Sam and Dean trying to lure the sicko out. Afterward, he and Loraine continued on doing what they did best… doing it. And the Winchesters had gone on their way.

It had almost seemed like old times. Dean was—Dean was actually acting better. Not pretending, but actually seemed like he was getting better. He still had trouble sleeping, but when his lips curled up Sam could almost believe a little bit of the smile was genuine.

That was, until Bedford.

Nick Munroe is ordinary looking, brown hair, dark eyes. Dean gives him a funny look, like maybe he’s seen the guy before and Sam has to do the talking.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with him!” Dean hisses, has little red veins in the whites of his eyes from lack of sleep.

Sam rolls his eyes; “I don’t know, just—take him to the strip club. Keep an eye out for the siren. Come on, just focus on the naked girls!”

Dean gives him a look, one of those looks that rivals Sam’s own scowls and makes Sam remember how unaffected by females Dean has been lately.

“Just—Look, keep him outta my hair until I can get ahold of the blood samples, that’s all I’m asking. And if you find the siren we’ll be outta here by morning and I won’t even complain if you want to smoke something in the hotel bathroom tonight, OK?”

Dean still glares at him, but it’s only at half power and he levels a finger in Sam’s face, makes a quick, transparent comment about the girls and leaves. It isn’t until later, when he’s sitting in Nick’s car and staring down at the flask in his hand with a cold weight in his stomach that Dean realizes how wrong he’s been, how far he’s let his emotions cloud his judgment.

Dean has been looking this whole time for a way to compare Nick to Cas and it hasn’t been there. His hair was messy but not in the same way, his eyes were dark, but not blue. He didn’t look like Cas, therefore he couldn’t have been the siren. Couldn’t have got Dean because he didn’t look like the one Dean really wanted— But that’s it, isn’t it. Dean hasn’t wanted sex since he came back. He’d fucked it up with Jamie, had wound up flirting at some girls in bars and leaving because he just couldn’t get over the feel of their skin against his own. Had even let that guy in the bar in Mapleton a few weeks ago buy him drinks and—and…

But there hadn’t been anything sexual about this, not about Nick.

Nick had been calm, easy to talk to, hadn’t argued or thought he was weak. Dean had—had felt himself relax in Nick’s presence in a way that he couldn’t around Sam. The world was warm and everything Nick said sounded so good. So easy and wiped all the uncertainty and fear away like fog from a mirror. For the first time in months Dean felt like everything would be OK again.

Dean won’t look at Sam when it’s over. Sits there against the wall holding his arm and staring into space with Sam’s words roaring in his head. Benson had said he was clear headed the whole time, had known exactly what he was doing when he’d killed his wife.

Sam rubs his face tiredly and looks at Bobby for direction, hoping—praying the older man will tell him what to do because he isn’t sure half the words that came out of his mouth were siren fueled, or if he’d really meant them.

0-0-0

They were driving when the year rolled over, on some lonesome black stretch of highway outside Davenport. Sam could see fireworks blinking every so often above towns as they passed.

Dean turned off the radio and it was quiet for a long time. Eventually Sam fell asleep, woke cold and stiff and half frozen when a security guard pecked on his window and told him they couldn’t sleep in the mall parking lot. They’d have to go somewhere else.

Dean doesn’t _think_ Sam knows about the drinking, about the fact that the bottle of whiskey in the trunk isn’t the same bottle that had been there earlier this week. Wasn’t even the second that had been there this month. He doesn’t _think_ Sam knows when he cracks open the bathroom window in their hotels and exhales bitter smoke into the night air. He doesn’t _think_ Sam knows… he’s _sure of it_. Part of him wants Sam to say something, wants Sam to care enough to call him an idiot or tell him he needs help. It’s a strange compulsion, wanting to just get a reaction out of his brother. Wanting to just do SOMETHING to make Sam acknowledge that there’s something WRONG that neither of them know how to fix.

Dean is quiet, speaks when spoken to, eats his food when Sam eats, takes the pills Sam keeps buying even though neither one of them are sure they’re doing any good. Saint John’s Wart, Dean had snorted at the bottle that morning and said something about goddamned hippie hoodoo witch crap but swallowed them down.

They’re in Idaho, the weather’s warm enough that neither of them wound up with hypothermia from sleeping in the car last night after a few wasted hours at a bar trying to hustle pool. People in this area are more conservative with their money, even the bikers and they barely had enough cash to fill up the tank and pay for lunch.

Bobby’s call came from out of the blue, but the information was good and maybe another case would pull Dean out of this funk.

“Bobby found something in Wyoming,” Sam doesn’t look up, takes a bite of his own sandwich and motions to his computer screen.

“A job?”

“Maybe,” He swipes some ketchup from his palm with a napkin; “Small town, no one’s died in the past week and a half.”

Dean snorted; “That’s so unusual?”

“Well, it’s how they’re not dying. Uh— One guy with terminal cancer strolls out of hospice. Another guy gets capped by a mugger, walks away without a scratch.”

Dean swallows; “Capped in the ass?”

Sam rolls his eyes and starts reading from the article he’s pulled up on his computer; “’Police say Mr. Jenkins was shot in the heart at point blank range by a nine millimeter—‘”

Dean choked on his fries, banged his fist against his chest a few times and forced them down; “And he’s not a doughnut?”

Sam shakes his head; “Locals are saying it’s a miracle.”

Dean’s eyebrows lift and he bobs his head to the side, like a shrug without shoulder motion; “Okay,” He dives back into his food.

Sam gives his head a shake; “’Okay’?”

Dean looks up at him innocently but doesn’t say anything.

Sam leans forward a little; “It’s gotta be somethin’ nasty, right? Maybe people makin’ deals or something?”

Dean doesn’t look at him. “You think so?”

“What else would it be?”

Dean shrugs again, mouth full and makes an uncertain grunting noise.

Sam lets his breath out and snaps his computer closed; “Alright, get that to go.”

Dean doesn’t move, doesn’t even act like he’s heard his brother.

“Dean, come on.”

He’s pretending to be deaf again. Used to do it when they were little and Sam wanted something. It was troubling then, now it just pisses Sam off.

He stands there, bag on his shoulder and stares while Dean chews; “What?”

He shrugs one shoulder up toward his ear; “You sure you want me goin’ with you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

He takes another spitefully large bite; “Wouldn’t wanna hold you back or nothin’.”

Sam’s eyes roll back into his head and his hands curl into fists. He leans forward and balances his knuckles on the tabletop, lets his breath out between pursed lips and speaks carefully; “I told you a hundred times. That was the siren talking, not me. Can we get passed this?”

Dean looks at him, swallows convulsively and drops his food onto his plate—practically throws it down and pushes to his feet, wipes his hands on his knees and pushes back from the table. “Yeah, we’re passed it.”

They drive in silence. Dean has the radio on for a while, then turns it off.

It’s cold and wet and miserable and neither of them are exactly feeling well. Sam’s been popping vitamin C like fucking M&M’s and still filling tissues with stuff the color of pea soup and Dean’s had a weird congested feeling in his chest for a few days now, but he isn’t saying anything. He’d rather be congested than hollow any day. But this means the box of tissues Sam had procured from the K-mart a while back is running low where they’ve migrated from under the seat to the space between them on the bench, and there’s a growing pile of them in a plastic sack in the passenger foot well battling Sam’s stupid long legs for prime real estate.

Wyoming looms up at them under a cold front. There’s leftover snow in people’s yards and roadside ditches are clogged with gravel, decaying leaves and every so often the bright torn wrapper of lost Halloween or Christmas candy. The weather forecast says more snow is to be expected for the coming weekend and Dean hasn’t had time or money for snow tires yet, not with running pell-mell after cases and using up their credit cards to pay for hotel rooms. Hell, they may have to park the Impala under a tarp in Bobby’s garage and take out that truck Dean’s been working on whenever they stop. There’s not much left to do to it that Sam can see. A sticker and a new back glass. That dent in the front fender isn’t too bad. Barely noticeable.  

Jenkins is a kind looking guy, a little pale, but considering he’s got a bullet in his heart Sam isn’t surprised. Guy seems nice, has to stop mid-way through the interview because a little platinum blonde girl with big brown eyes bounces into the room waving a drawing at him and he spends a moment doting on her. Telling her how much he loves it and her.

The wife, Dean can’t remember her name even though the guy told him just a few seconds ago, is standing in the doorway watching with a soft kind smile on her face.

The girl dashes off again, mom in tow and starts chattering away as she continues doing whatever it is little girls do with crayons and paper and the guidance of their mothers.

Jenkins sits there smiling at the image he’s been presented with and after a moment continues with his tale.

“I was nobody’s saint. Not exactly father of the year, either. But, when that guy shot me and I didn’t bleed a drop. I just knew the Lord was giving me a second chance. I had this feeling like angels were watching over me… I wouldn’t expect you guys to understand.”

Dean leaned back in his seat a little and his fingers flexed against the tabletop. “Well, we’ll just have to try,” His leg was bouncing again, quick and almost like a beat.

Sam mentioned crossroads, people with black eyes or red.

Jenkins looks perplexed but not defensive; “Who’d you say you guys were again?”

“Nevermind,” Dean’s mouth curled up and he stood, followed Sam out the door and back to the car.

The hotel room was drafty, looked like it had been welcoming patrons since the civil war and there was a weird smell coming from under the bathroom sink but Dean couldn’t find the source of it. Dean couldn’t tell if the décor was intentional or just a remnant because there were some old doors in there with cracked peeling paint set up like a room divider. It reminded him of those weird little shops springing up all over the south-east selling badly painted pictures and wall hangings that looked like the Blair Witch had tied them together in her spare time.

Sam goes out to interview the cancer guy at around three-thirty and Dean stays behind, feels uneasy in this town, unwelcome in a way that has nothing to do with the people and everything to do with the feeling in the air. He’d rather stay behind salt lines thank you much.

Sam comes back in with a Look on his face. He offers only a brief greeting before he starts speaking; “That cancer survivor? He was clinically DEAD… His wife pulled the plug and now he’s taking her out to dinner for their twentieth anniversary.”

Dean rubs his mouth, feels like he’s got something on his face but can’t scratch it off. “Any sign of a deal?”

“No.”

He leans back in his seat and rubs his hands over his head, feels kind of sweaty and gross and wants to take a shower.

“What about you, find anybody dying around here?”

Dean shakes his head and motions to the laptop screen; “Not since Cole Griffith… He dropped ten days ago. It was the last death I could find.”

Sam leans over his shoulder and reads the obituary; “So what are you thinkin’?”

Dean stares at the kid’s picture for a minute, thinks the poor guy lucked out being the last person to die instead of the first to survive and scratches his wrist particularly hard; “Maybe it is what the people say it is.”

Sam scoffs; “Miracles?” Sam shakes his head and when Dean vacates his seat in front of the computer Sam takes it; “In our experience, when do miracles just happen?”

Dean leans his hip against the side table as he starts in on his sixth cup of coffee that day; “There’s no deals, no skeevy faith healers. I mean, these souls just ain’t gettin’ dragged into the light!” The coffee tastes weak and vaguely like socks, he pulls the cradle out and eyes the filter suspiciously.

Sam nods; “Maybe because there’s no one around to carry them.”

“Whatta you mean?” He takes a seat across from Sam and squeezes his mug between his hands until the heat of it starts to hurt.

“Well, Grim Reapers, that’s what they do, right? Schlep souls?”

Dean snorts and takes a drink, winces as it burns all the way down even without the scotch. He gestures for Sam to continue with a jerk of his chin.

“So, if death ain’t in town…”

“Then nobody’s dying.”

“Exactly.”

Dean snorted into his cup; “So what? The local Reaper’s on strike? Playin’ the back nine?” He shakes his head; “I don’t know…”

“Well, then let’s talk to somebody who might know.”

“Well, last I checked, Huggy Bear ain’t available—“

Sam shakes his head; “No, the kid—The KID, Dean.”

“The kid’s a doornail,” He gulps down more sludge.

“If he was the last person to die around here, then maybe he’s seen something. We should talk to him.”

Dean chuckles, seems just a little too easy going and Sam kind of wants to get up and check the dilation of his pupils.

“I love how matter-of-fact you are about that, Sam.”

It snows again, not much but it’s slick and icy and the temperature drops down to below freezing. Dean perches on the headstone of some old broad named Mildred Connelly and her husband James who had died over fifty years ago. Mildred apparently was over a hundred when she kicked it about two years ago and was sassy enough to have ‘Buried With Her Boots On’ engraved on the granite below her date of death. 

Sam’s kneeling in the snow snuffing back gobs of snot and setting out herbs and things for the ritual. He stops every so often to blow his nose and stuff the used tissues into the grocery bag and keeps going.

Dean’s leg is bouncing and he mutters something about his balls hiding between his kidneys until spring like frickin chipmunks and flips a few more pages in the journal; “You sure this is gonna work?”

Sam stuffs another tissue into the bag; “No, but if his spirit’s around, this should smoke him out.”

Dean shuts the book and looks away, scans the trees with his lips pursed.

Sam rolls his eyes; “What?”

Dean shakes his head and looks at him; “This job is jacked, that’s what!”

“How so?”

“You want me to gank a monster or torch a corpse? Hey!” He makes a noise like a wet balloon deflating and stifles a cough; “Let’s light it up, right? But—but this? If we fix whatever this is, people will start dropping dead! Good people! Innocent people!”

Sam brushes off his hands and pushes to his feet; “I don’t want them to die either, Dean. But there’s a natural order to things,” He blows his nose like a trumpet blast.

“You’re kidding right?”

“What?”

“You don’t see the irony in that? You and me, we’re like the poster boys of the unnatural order! All we do is ditch death!”

“Yeah, but the normal rules don’t really apply to us, do they,” He fishes some more herbs out of his bag.

Dean laughs and it turns into a cough but he seems unbothered by it; “We’re no different than anybody else, Sam.”

“Oh, yeah… whatever.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sam flexes his hands open and closed working warmth back into his fingers; “I’m infected with demon blood… You’ve been to Hell. That’s not normal.”

Dean’s jaw tightens and he looks away, clears his throat and his leg starts bouncing a little harder.

“I know you wanna think of yourself as Joe the Plumber, Dean, but you’re not. Neither am I! I’m not happy about it, but it’s a part of me and I’ve come to accept that… You should too.”

Dean tilts his head back and blows rings of foggy breath toward the moon; “Joe the Plumber was a douche.”

Sam works his tongue at the backs of his teeth and lets his breath out in a whoosh; “Are you gonna help me finish this or not?”

He makes a few more foggy breath rings and scratches at his jaw then pushes away from the Connellys’ headstone.

“HEY!”

It’s like icewater in his veins and Sam turns toward the voice, gets a flashlight beam right in the face and lifts a hand to shield his eyes. “Shit—“

Dean grumbles under his breath and puts on one of his fake, just-trust-me smiles.

He’s a middle aged balding guy in a khaki colored Carhartt coat. His stance is authoritative, probably ex-army, or maybe even ex-marines… Dude’s probably called the cops already. Dammit.

“What’re you doing here?”

Sam, genius that he is, opens his mouth and says something witty; “Uhhh— Look, just—just take it easy!”

The dude steps closer and trains his light down on the grave; “What the hell is this?”

Dean waves his hands over it; “Oh, this—this is not what it looks like,” He chuckles nervously, grinds his teeth when his throat tightens and coughs to clear it.

“Really?” The guy is watching them from the corner of his eye; “Cause it looks like devil worship.”

“What!” Dean laughs again, motions to the pentacle and the sigils drawn out on leather in blood—“No, NO! This isn’t devil worship! It—it’s…” Another nervous laugh, “This—this is—uh—this is…” He stops and meets Sam’s eyes, and hiccups loudly; “I don’t have a good answer.”

Sam closes his eyes slowly and swallows back bile, turns to the guy and tries to think quickly, tries anything really to get them out of this mess. “Look,” He displays his empty palms; “We’re leaving.”

Dean makes another hiccupping noise and when Sam turns to look at him notices how his brother has his head cocked to the side a little and is squinting at the stranger.

The dude shakes his head slowly and when he speaks the words freeze in Sam’s chest; “You’re not going anywhere…” He steps closer slowly, eyes unblinking, pupils wide, “Ever again, Sam.” He smiles, kind and forgiving. He tilts his head and his eyes roll up and up and up until there’s nothing but white shot with little veins.

Dean’s still making those involuntary noises in his throat but other than that his voice sounds even when he speaks the demon’s name. His hands are shaking and Sam can see a twitch in his mouth, an urge to cringe back and put as much distance between himself and Alastair as he can, but he holds his ground. “I wondered when you’d show up again.”

Alastair smiles at him with his borrowed face; “I’m like a bad penny, I always turn up,” He tilts his head, flicks his tongue over his lips; “Anyway, no time to chat. I’ve got a hot date with Death you see… Can’t be late,” He smiles and flips his hand at Dean like he’s shooing away a gnat and Dean’s air born.

Sam sees his brother cartwheel through the air, arms flailing eyes wide, teeth grit—and slam into a headstone some thirty feet away. He hears it like a melon dropping on the sidewalk. A loud sick CRACK and Dean hits the ground unmoving, face turned into the snow.

He doesn’t get up.

Alastair is still smiling, flicks his flashlight beam back and forth and hums to some tune or another, flips his fingers nonchalantly at Sam… and blinks when nothing happens. “You’re stronger, Sam… You been Soloflexing with your little slut?”

Sam feels his mouth pull back into a grin, feels it bubble up from somewhere behind his stomach, deep in the dark bitter pit that swallowed everything he’s been trying to sew shut since he was a kid but now seems to run over and split larger at the edges in want of what he’s filled it with; “You have no idea.”

0-0-0

Dean doesn’t look like he’s breathing when Sam gets to him, he’s utterly still and his left arm is twisted awkwardly. Sam’s afraid to move him, afraid his brother’s hurt terribly inside and if he doesn’t get help when all is said and done here Dean will just be another corpse. He inhales and exhales, forces the adrenaline down and pulls his gloves off with his teeth, says his brother’s name low and carefully but gets no reaction.

There’s a lump forming on the side of Dean’s head, brushing it with his fingers Sam’s pretty sure his brother’s thick skull isn’t dented and despite the blood there are no visible bits of brain matter. His neck feels whole when Sam strokes his fingers down the back of it, counting the bumps of his vertebrae. He pushes Dean’s shirt and jacket up carefully, shoves his hand in and feels along his back and sides as best he can, mutters an apology at the invasion of privacy and moves on to Dean’s legs. Nothing there looks or feels broken, so he risks it, catches Dean’s hip and the top of his shoulder near his neck and rolls Dean backward, supports his head when he gets him onto his side and gets him situated on his back, leans forward and hears Dean’s heart beating, quick uneven little breaths. A swipe over his chest and there are no broken ribs but there’s a bruise forming across his shoulder, he hopes Dean doesn’t fight him when it comes time to pop it back into joint. He must have hit the flat of the stone not the corner or edges because other than being unconscious he seems like he might be OK and the bleeding—well, that’s actually a good sign, means Dean isn’t dying. Sam would have been scared if he’d come over and found that cut on Dean’s scalp was dry. He might have just given up on the whole ‘Fixing It’ thing.

Dean rouses slowly, doesn’t know where he is or what’s going on, doesn’t talk. He’s rattled, Sam’s seen it before. Dean has a damned thick skull and he’s not used to concussions. It takes a mighty wallop to give him one, but when it happens it isn’t pretty. He’ll respond to simple directions but if he has to think or is left alone too long he decides it’s a good idea to continue doing the last thing he remembers doing.

Last time he’d nearly sat their hotel room on fire because the ghost of an old woman suffocated by her daughter in law for the insurance money tossed him head first into the Impala’s rear fender—left a sizable dent in the car and Dean had been out cold for almost twenty minutes—scared Sam half to Death because Dean had staggered around swinging his fists with his mouth hanging open and one eye not quite on center.

Dean and concussions did not mix well. Sam had a feeling this one would be particularly nasty. He left Dean propped up against the headstone he’d collided with and ran back to gather their things.

Dean’s hands twitch uneasily in his lap while Sam drives and he keeps his chin on his chest, eyes blinking slowly and not quite at the same time. He develops the hiccups again just as they reach the hotel and Sam helps him up the stairs, has to pull his brother’s wet clothes off of him and replace them with dry ones. Gets him into bed and brackets his body in with pillows to keep him from rolling and forces his shoulder back in alignment, puts the waste basket by the bed and spends about ten minutes soaking the blood from Dean’s scalp. It’s not deep enough to need stitches, but deep enough that it’s still bleeding sluggishly and will leave an ugly black wound on the side of Dean’s head. He presses a dry cloth onto it and uses one of Dean’s bandannas to tie it to his brother’s head. Dean will complain when he regains himself, but Sam’s just doing what needs to be done.

He sits up the rest of the night, tries to keep Dean still, rouses him every so often so he doesn’t slip into a coma, but it’s more difficult than you’d imagine. Dean isn’t exactly responsive to the whole ‘caring’ thing, gets halfway mumbling through an exorcism then starts reciting some recipe or another. Sam isn’t sure what it is, kind of tunes it out when Dean mentions _crème fraîche_ and something about nipples like strawberries. He ducks out after the ice he’s had on Dean’s scalp and shoulder is all melted and when he comes back Dean’s thrown the pillows to the corners of the room and is sitting up against the headboard staring at him woozily. The bandanna Sam had tied around his head is over by the window half under the table and the glass of water on the bedside table is half empty. Some of it is on Dean’s shirt, some of it is still in the glass, but the majority of it looks to have made it down Dean’s throat and hasn’t made a reappearance as of yet.

Sam motions to the ice he’s got in a plastic bag; “How’re you feelin’?”

Dean squints, he supposes that equates a scowl considering. “I’m in pain…” He flicks his tongue over his lips and grins; “I think I have a concussion.”

“Want some aspirin?”

“No, thanks, House—“ He hiccups and goes a little gray in the face.

Sam thinks he should probably restrict his brother’s TV watching privileges when he’s concussed. He takes the cloth from Dean and wraps it around the ice, hands it back and watches while Dean folds it around his head like a kid might do a security blanket.

Dean goes still for a while, chin bowed to his chest and Sam takes his place at the foot of the bed.

“So, demons, huh?”

“Yeah… so much for miracles.”

Dean’s diaphragm spasms uselessly a few more times and he sinks back down in the bed with his knees jackknifed and his free hand over his eyes; “What the hell happened?”

“What’s the last thing you remember.”

“Alastair… he was grinnin’ at me, then—“ He lets one knee sag toward the edge of the bed, a futile attempt to roll over; “Lights out.”

Sam exhales and tells him an edited version, leaves out what he’d done and hopes Dean’s still out of it enough to take it.

“How come he couldn’t fling you? He chucked you like monkey poop last time.”

Sam shrugged one shoulder; “Got no idea… Maybe it’s all the cheese burgers I’ve been eating.”

Dean peers out from under his hand; “Do me a favor…”

“Sure.”

“I can’t stop you from keepin’ your little secrets, okay… But, don’t treat me like I’m an idiot.”

Yeah… Sam inhaled deeply and let it out, “I’m not keeping secrets—“

“I may be concussted—”

“Concussed—“

“Whatever.”

Sam rubbed his palms on his thighs and pushed to his feet, went for the coffee pot.

“So, you go back and talk to the dead kid?”

“I didn’t have to,” The coffee tastes like shit. Sam dumps in some sugar; “Bobby called, He did some digging… and he thinks I’m right. Local reaper’s gone. Not just ‘gone’ though, kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?”—Hic—“By demons? Why?”

Sam leans against the dresser across from his brother and props open his journal; “’And he bloodied Death under the newborn sky. Sweet to taste, but bitter when once devoured.’”

Dean’s nose wrinkles up; “What the hell’s that mean?”

“I’ve got no idea… It’s from a very obscure, very arcane version of Revelations.”

Dean’s head turns and he regards Sam through slit lids; “Which means what I think it means?”

“Basically you kill a Reaper under the solstice moon— tomorrow night, by the way – You got yourself a broken seal.”

Dean’s eyes flutter closed and he’s still but for the sudden jerks of motion from his middle.

Hic—Hic—

Sam looks around nervously; “Is it Him again?”

“No… my stomach.”

“You hurt your stomach?”

“’feel like I’m gonna puke… happens when I feel sick,” He swats Sam’s hands away.

Sam nods, “Want me to scare you? I heard that helps.”

“Couldn’t even if you tried,” He exhales and rubs his face, shifts the compress to his shoulder. “How do you ice a Reaper? You can’t kill Death.”

“I don’t know,” Sam takes another drink of his coffee; “Maybe demons can… Where the hell are the angels is what I wanna know. We could use their help for once.”

“Well, looks like we’re gonna have to handle this one on our own.”

“Oh? What’s your plan? We gonna just swing in and save the friendly neighborhood Reaper?”

Dean’s shoulders bob; “You got a better idea?”

“Reapers are invisible, Dean. The only people that can see them are the dead and the dying… And I really don’t think being concussed counts.”

Dean mumbles something, chuckles and winces, seems to curl around his head a little.

“What?” Sam moves closer, bends over him and wrinkles his nose; “Say it again, please. A little more voice and a little less giggling, please.”

“I said, ‘if Ghosts are the only ones who can see them, then we become ghosts.’”

“Aaand we’re going to the hospital…”

“What? Why?”

“You’re obviously bleeding in your head if you think becoming a ghost to save a Reaper is a good idea.”

He gets a hand on Sam’s face and pushes him back; “Not literally ghosts… I don’t mean kill ourselves. I mean… like Ghost Walking. You know… Remember about six months ago me you and Dad hunted that ghost that was choking all the jocks? Only it wasn’t a ghost? Was that chubby witch girl astro protecting herself?”

“Astro… You mean Astral Projecting? Dean—that was almost eight years ago!”

“I said that.”

Sam wrestled Dean’s arms down and pried his eyes open between forefinger and thumb. Dean grumbled and rolled his eyes around petulantly but Sam checked the reaction of his pupils.

No, Dean had never reacted well to concussions.

It’s Pamela, of course it is. Poor woman hasn’t given them enough it seems. Dean’s roused himself enough by noon that his vision doesn’t split or waver too much if he keeps his head still and Sam reluctantly agrees and makes the call.

She refuses. She refuses about five times and hangs up on Sam. When Sam calls back she answers the phone telling him he’s an idiot, that he’s going to wind up getting himself killed and she doesn’t care how cute he is he’s a big puppy eyed idiot—and you’d better stop making that face at me Sam Winchester, I mean it!

Dean returns the next afternoon with Pamela in tow, she is beyond unhappy, she’s scared and Dean doesn’t look much better. The hiccups have stopped thankfully, but he’s tired and pale and the wound under his hair is swollen. He crosses to the bed and sits on it, covers his face wearily and when Sam looks at him he flops his hand toward Pamela as she feels out the boundaries of the room.

“Aw, that’s sweet, Grumpy. What do you say to deaf people?”

Dean snorts and Sam shoots him a scathing look.

“Which one of you brainiacs came up with astral projection anyway? Dean wasn’t very forthcoming on the ride over—Why in the hell did you let him drive anyway—Kid’s noggin’s more scrambled than Eggs Benedict!”

Sam’s mouth flapped open and closed and Dean mumbled toward the floor. “My idea, my car—And I can drive better concussed than he can any day of the week.”

“Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that, Chachi,” She shakes back her hair. “So, let’s be clear, shall we? You wanna rip your souls outta your bodies and take a little stroll through the spirit world?” She takes a seat and crosses one leg over the other, elbow on her knee and closes herself off from them.

“More or less,” Sam looks away nervously.

“Do you have any idea how heavy-duty insane that is?”

“Maybe, but that’s where the Reaper is, so—“

“Didn’t anybody ever tell you that just because all the cool kids are doing it doesn’t mean you should?”

Sam inhaled deeply and let it out; “Look, something bad—something very, very bad is going to happen if we don’t stop this. We’re running out of time and this is the only plan we’ve got.”

“Well, it’s nuts.”

“Not if you know what you’re doing—“

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” She traces the seam in her jeans with her fingernails.

Dean looks up, rubs his hands together, “No… but you do.”

“Yeah,” She snorts, “I do. And guess what? I’m sick of being hauled back into your angel-demon Soc-Greaser crap!”

Dean rolls his eyes and Sam has a feeling Pamela spent the hours on the road filling the silence in the car with reasons this was a dumb idea, reasons they were dumb, reasons she was dumb for always falling for stupid lost puppy faces, frickin’ deep voices and goddamned tight asses.

_I’m gonna just give it up and become a nun! And not just for the lesbian action, Dean. I can’t take much more of this bullshit, understand? You boys are gonna be the end of me!_

“Look, I’d love to be kickin’ back with a nice cold one watchin’ Judge Judy too—“

Pamela turns her head away; “Nice. More blind jokes?”

Dean smiles indulgently; “You know what I mean.”

She refuses to face him, but that doesn’t matter, he keeps talking.

“We’re talkin’ the end of the world here, Okay? No more tasseled leather pants, no more Ramones CDs, no more nothin’!” He swallows, looks at his feet and breathes out; “We need your help.”

Her lips compress and she tilts her chin up as if thinking, says the word between her teeth like it tastes bad; “Fine.”

0-0-0

It feels weird, lying there with Pamela’s hand wrapped around his ankle. She said she had to have contact with skin, so he hadn’t complained, but it was still a nauseating sensation, her fingers were cool and she had long fingernails, totally innocuous when her hands were above waist level, but the light scratch of them over his shin and Dean was covered in gooseflesh, slimy under his skin. Wanted to getoutrunfleeGETAWAY from it, but he held himself still.

“Close your eyes, relax, focus on my voice.”

It started as basic hypnosis. Dean resisted at first but she persisted. Her voice painted red lines on the inside of his lids like the pattern of his favorite flannel shirt. Soft and warm and he felt himself slowly relaxing, shrinking back deep, pulling away from his body like he was falling asleep. It was like the first few times he he’d taken a Smoke in the bathroom a month ago, how he hadn’t really seemed in control of himself, warm and stupid almost as if he were drunk, but without the threat of a hangover, or the bitter ache in his stomach. It—it was kind of nice, he wondered if he could get her to record the ritual so he could sleep without dreaming. That’d be nice.

He’s not sure when her words change to Latin, but they ring through his body like a low easy thrum of electricity. Like when he found those plasma ball lamps in stores and couldn’t help but lick his fingertips and touch—

“Okay, guys… That’s it, show time.”

Dean exhaled and levered himself up. His head swam for a second and he closed his eyes, bowed his chin to his chest and spoke under his breath; “Well, shit… Nothin’ like shootin’ blanks,” He scratched his fingers over the uninjured side of his head and turned to look at her.

She was tapping her foot mid-air but seemed otherwise unaffected.

Dean cleared his throat, but that weird tickle in his chest wasn’t there. He narrowed his eyes and turned to his brother.

Sam was sprawled out on his back, almost serene looking with his lips parted and his face relaxed. Dean turned back to Pamela and noticed something strange. There was a weird purple tint to the air around her. Like a penumbra of light only this flickered and shifted like flame, pulsed outward from her skin through her clothes just the barest fraction. It—it was beautiful. He rubbed his eyes and looked at his brother once more, but there was no little aura of light around Sam—

“Dean.”

He turned and there was Sam standing behind him with his hands in his pockets—yet there he was on the bed. Dean turned his head slowly—unnerved—and there he was on his own bed, lying there all limp and defenseless with a hand on his stomach and the other clenched in the sheet.

“Alright, so I’m assuming you’re somewhere over the rainbow,” Pamela rubbed at her cheek and tapped her foot again; “Remember, once I fix that line in front of the door you two are gonna be stuck out there until I call you back… I’ll keep ‘em away from your meat suits, but you’re practically naked right now, so, don’t drop the soap,” She climbs to her feet and feels her way up the bed to Sam’s ear, says she’ll whisper the incantation like this so they can hear her, but because they’re just projections into the spirit world instead of part of it, she won’t be able to hear them. She whispers something to Sam but Dean can’t hear it, then she moves toward the door, holds it open for a five count and says; “All ashore that’s goin’ ashore!” in a singsong voice and unscrews the cap on the bottle of salt Sam had given her to seal the doorway with.

Dean had refused to ‘Go Under’ unless there were salt lines, even though they would have been trapped in the room. He waited in the hallway until he could feel the tingle of the salt finishing its pathway, effectively sealing them out, then tested it by trying to walk through, only to bounce off.

Sam cocked an eyebrow; “Satisfied?”

He nodded; “Don’t want Alastair catchin’ me with my pants down is all…”

Sam shook his head and moved toward the stairs.

Dean thought maybe that flickering purple light in Pamela’s skin had been a fluke until they got to the street. There weren’t many people out, but half a block from the hotel a blonde secretary of a jogger passed right through Sam and the most extraordinary thing happened.

It was like watching a fuse being lit. Dean expected there to be a sound—like the sizzle of an acetylene torch touching metal, but it was entirely silent, a little shockwave of gold where the woman hit his brother and passed through him. The color of her—white yellow arched back like electricity toward them as she jogged past and fluttered along behind her for a few paces before receding back toward her skin.

Dean turned and jammed his arm to the elbow into Sam’s chest and cackled at the fireworks spluttering off where they were going through one another. It—it felt weirder than it looked. Like sticking your hand into water that is boiling and frozen all at once. There was an undercurrent of thought noise, like a radio on too low to decipher and a wave of pure confusion studded with disgust.

Sam cleared his throat; “Dude.”

He looked up, met his brother’s eyes and stopped moving entirely; “Am I makin’ you uncomfortable?”

“Get outta me,” Sam looked like he wanted to smack him one.

Dean pulled his hand back and shoved it into his pocket, felt strangely embarrassed now that he thought about it. “You’re such a prude. Come on,” He walked away quickly.

There were half a dozen or more people on the street. Each one of them was different, flickering at a different intensity and color. A woman was leading her son across the street by one mitten covered hand and the boy was the brightest most dazzling shade of pink Dean had ever seen. The color didn’t flicker and waver, it RADIATED off of him and reached toward his mother. Where they touched, green and pink, into white and Dean couldn’t help but stare at it, feel an instinctual jump of emotion in his chest he couldn’t quite name.

“You see that?” He waved a hand at Sam and motioned to the kid and his mother.

“See what?” Sam paused, “What is it?”

“The kid—his mom… you don’t see that?”

“I see a kid and his mom, Dean—why… what do you see?” He stepped closer, bent forward a little and squinted.

Dean flapped his hand wordlessly and his mouth opened and closed; “There—there was all this—this COLOR and—and light and stuff.”

Sam gave him a nervous stare; “Wow, okay. Concussions carry over to the spirit world. Wonderful.”

“No—no this isn’t that—LOOK!” He reached for Sam’s hand and squeezed it. Held it up so Sam could see where their fingers overlapped. “You don’t see that?”

“I see you holding my hand.”

Dean released him and shoved a hand through his hair. Well shit. “This is weird… There’s—there’s all this color on people, like their skin is on fire with it.”

Sam’s nose wrinkled up. “Okay… and?”

“AND what the hell is it!”

Sam blinked slowly and pulled his shoulders up to his ear, shook his head and let out a breath; “I don’t see anything… Everything’s just kind of blurry and gray and dark.”

Dean looked around himself, caught flickers of muted hidden color in the trees and grass and a peach golden flutter of a little dog on the end of another green hued woman’s leash. Yeah, he could get the whole blurred and dark think, but there was so much COLOR where there was life. Even the water and snow seemed to faintly shimmer. The very dirt had a deep chocolate twinkle to it. It was like an acid trip on crack.

“Look, Dean, if this is gonna be a problem maybe you should go back—“

“And do what? Sit in the hallway until Pamela calls me back?” He pushes at his hair compulsively and lets out an exasperated sigh; “No, no I’m good. I’m good, let’s go.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter tomorrow evening because I'm being sneaky and wanna make you wait because something Big is gonna happen Thursday. *Evil Face*


	13. Rose Colored Glasses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update on Thursday.
> 
> Remember, this is AU.

0-0-0

Cole throws stuff at them when they come into the room, actually PHYSICALLY throws things at them. It scares his mother away and she hides in the kitchen for a while with a bottle of gin.

The kid isn’t very receptive, tells them what happened to him and about the Reaper that came for him, even about how the black smoke had swallowed the Reaper up and disappeared.

But he won’t tell them where it is.

The new Reaper that sweeps into the house is a surprise, a ghastly billowy pale white and silver shape that causes the lights to flicker and the curtains to flap. Cole disappears in a flicker of panic and Dean shouts at the Reaper, lunges around the corner and stops at the foot of the steps.

The figure that comes down them is not billowy, or silvery white, nor is she ghastly. She’s pretty, black hair and light eyes, the only thing off about her is the fact that she doesn’t flicker with color. In fact, she seems to draw what dances around Sam toward herself. Pulls at it enough that Dean can see the outline of his own. It’s colorless, shimmers like heat off the road and he wonders if it’s because he feels so empty or if you just can’t see your own. She tilts her head to the side and addresses Dean by his name.

Tessa. It takes him a minute, but when she reaches out and cups a hand to his jaw, traces the ridge of his cheekbone with the pad of her thumb he remembers, thinks it’s weird because he can’t remember seeing color burning around people, it’s like he hadn’t been able to see it before.

Tessa seems completely unaffected with the pending apocalypse. Like she’s beyond the scope of it and Dean supposes maybe she is. What kind of affect does the apocalypse have on Death anyway?

It’s not easy to convince Tessa to wait. To let them fix it. Sam goes to talk to Cole, to convince him to tell them where the ‘Black Smoke’ is and Dean crosses his arms over his chest, feels like the Reaper’s staring at him. He glances at her, sees that she is in fact staring, and hunches his shoulders; “What?”

She meets his eyes evenly, coolly and speaks; “You’ve changed.”

He snorts, looks away.

“You can see them, can’t you.”

“See what?”

“Their souls.”

There should be a lump of tension in his throat, should be the pound of fear in his chest, but there isn’t. Instead he just stares at her; “Excuse me?”

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they.”

He swallows even though he doesn’t need to; “Why can I see ‘em and Sam can’t?”

“You know why. Deep down, you know.”

“Is it because of Hell?”

She tilts her head sadly; “Not quite…” Her lips curl up and her eyes sparkle—Dean can almost make out the billowy form of her beneath the ‘skin’ she’s cloaked herself in. “You’ll figure it out soon enough.”

“Why is everyone so cryptic? What happened to just giving a guy a straight answer?”

She huffs out a single sad sounding laugh; “There are no straight answers, Dean. Never have been, never will be.”

His hands feel like they should be sweaty so he rubs them on his pants.

“It’s funny, really. Meeting you again after Everything.”

“How so?”

She steps closer, arms crossed and tilts her chin up; “You’re the one that got away, Dean. You’d be surprised how little that happens to me.”

He exhales and crosses his arms, “Can I tell you something—just between you and me?”

She nods, “Who am I gonna tell?”

“After our little… uh—‘Experience’. For that whole year, I felt like I had this hole in my gut. Like I was missing something… I didn’t know what. But you know what it was? It was you… The pain of losing my father and Sammy. I just— I wish I’d gone with you then… Maybe none of this would have happened if I had.”

“Maybe it would have happened anyway and the guy in your place wouldn’t be as stubborn as you are. What then?”

He looks at her; “What if he would have been stronger?”

She smiles sadly; “You’ll never know.”

“I should have let go… I should have let you take me,” He inhales, lets it out and looks away. It’s painful to admit, even more so to realize he means it. If he could go back would he erase all of it? Save himself from Hell and the agony of his father’s deal, the horror that had been sparked by the djinn, Sam’s death and his own deal… Would he just die there in that hospital bed and not care what happened after?

It seems like it would be easy, seems like everything that went wrong started that day. Started because he was afraid. Maybe—maybe he could fix it. Maybe he— “When this is over… When we stop this,” He swallows, actually feels a lump in his throat, puts on a fake smile that feels twice as transparent without his body; “Wanna—wanna right a few wrongs?”

She looks somehow sad and hopeful and sympathetic in the same instant, smiles mournfully at him and shakes her head; “I can’t,” Then she looks at his chest—INTO him and shakes her head again, this time in something akin to awe— “You have no idea, do you.”

Sam clears his throat and Dean turns to him. Tightens his jaws and wonders how much his brother has heard.

Cole stares at Tessa like she’s the incarnation of evil, he’s all bright green around the edges. Dean knows the feeling, had looked at her like that himself not too long ago. Cole tells them where he saw the Black Smoke, how it had sunk into a few of the people at his funeral and turned their faces ugly.

Tessa seems unperturbed when the lights flicker, unconcerned—until the Black Smoke floods the house, wraps around her and seems to gobble her up. It recedes as quickly as it appeared.

That it seems is just the beginning of their troubles.

0-0-0

“It’s not gonna move if you don’t concentrate.”

“I _am_ concentrating!”

Dean steps back, shakes himself head to foot and presents a fighting stance to the windmill.

Sam has the vague idea that his life is some weird parody of Don Quixote and that this must make him Sancho Panza. He rubs his face tiredly. 

Dean looks like he’s constipated and there’s a little vein twitching above his eye. He visibly starts shaking all over and the windmill gives a pathetic little twitch of its blades.

Sam feels almost embarrassed, especially after Dean’s excited exclamation when Cole turns to him with an eyebrow raised; “What, you pull a muscle?”

Dean snuffs derisively; “Alright, Yoda. Let’s see what you got.”

Cole shrugs, looks at the windmill and breathes out.

It squeaks and squeals and starts turning, the porch swing starts rocking… the wind chime starts swinging and the neighbor’s dog starts yapping at them in fear.

Sam’s impressed. Dean’s grinning from ear to ear.

‘The Good Stuff’ is just like Cole said, ‘The Good Stuff’… after, yanno, getting slapped around by the ghost of kid whose balls hadn’t even dropped.  Getting beat up by a ghost while in your body is one thing. Feeling the full unfiltered brunt of it is completely different matter.

Cole gets a kick out of it, laughs and backhands Dean like he’s been slapping down people his whole life, or at least wanting to. Dean stares at him stunned and puts a hand to his jaw.

Sam laughs until the kid gives him a right cross to the chin, then it’s all business. Cole laughs from across the room and points at the expression on Sam’s face.

“You gotta teach us that!”

0-0-0

There are shimmering blue-white images they’ve never seen before painted all over the funeral home. Sam’s hackles rise when he sees them and he lets out a low whistle; “Wow…”

Dean motions to the sigils; “Place looks like New Jack City.”

Sam nods, doesn’t really say anything and tries to figure out what kind of talismans those could be. He’s sure he’s seen something similar down south. Maybe New Orleans but he can’t put his finger on it.

“Does nobody see this?” Dean looks around, watches people walk past but none of them seem to pay any attention.

Sam shrugs; “Maybe it’s demon invisible ink, you can only see it in the veil.”

Dean doesn’t like it. Something in him instinctually recoils. If he had been standing there physically he may have felt nauseated. “Any idea what it’s for?”

Sam inhaled deeply and pushed it out on a whoosh, the streetlight above them flickered; “We’ll find out.”

Dean felt it when they passed over the threshold. Like he’d walked face first into a spider-web. He batted at it, felt it catching on his clothes, but followed Sam inside. It felt like the air inside the building was just a little too thin and he became increasingly uncomfortable as they searched.

Tessa and the other Reaper were lying in a symbol in the main room. They looked asleep but then again, Death never slept. What really caught Dean’s eye though, was the man in the room. Mid-thirties, brown hair—and the flicker of color around him was black. All black. Something gossamer like was clinging to his back. Small, roughly child sized, twisted and broken and brutalized and Dean’s breath caught in his throat.

Dean held out a hand and stopped Sam in his tracks, felt himself shaking, pointed at the guy and spoke in a whisper; “That—that’s a demon, Sam. H-holy SHIT I can SEE it!”

Sam bent to Dean’s eyelevel and squinted, saw nothing but some guy. “You sure?”

“Fuck yes, I’m sure!” There was no doubting it. None at all. He’d thought getting a FEELING of a demon’s true face while awake was bad. This—Jesus, he preferred the black smoke! At least a demon unattached to some poor schmuck just looked like a seething cloud of ectoplasm. This guy—Holy FUCK this guy was full on literally RIDING the dude like a demented jockey! It had twisted clawed fingers sunk into the man’s head and a second set wrapped around his throat, mouth pressed to the nape of his neck. Dean could see a vague orange flicker in the Demon’s mouth, figured that must be the poor bastard’s soul and gave himself another good shake. “Watch my back.”

It should have struck him as too easy but he was feeling cocky. Maybe he was a Chachi. He and Sam scrambled after the demon and right into a trap. Iron chain clinked and clacked against iron sconces and the next thing Dean knew he and Sam were boxed in. Caged and someone was slowly clapping as they walked toward them.

He had yet another human face. Dean recognized this one, the cancer patient who’d taken his wife out for their twentieth anniversary just two days ago. He didn’t need to see the white eyes to know who it was.

Alastair wasn’t riding this poor guy. He’d impaled him.

There wasn’t much about Alastair that appeared human aside from his face. He was a twisted monstrosity of a thing that resembled an insect a snake and a great taloned bird of some kind. His body was long and plated like a centipede but there were no writhing little legs and his sinuous body tapered to a sharp scorpion like tail on clawed ugly feet. He had arms. Nine of them. Eight were for torturing, the ninth was continually playing with his genitals. It looked like there had, at one time been wings on his body, but they had rotted down to bone and were slowly being absorbed into his bulk. He hadn’t looked like this often in Hell unless it was part of the torture or he just wanted to cut and cut and slice away at you. More hands meant more fun. He, like all demons, could constantly change forms in hell. Alastair though seemed to enjoy thinking up new and disturbing bodies to wear. But this was somehow more solid and disturbing than all of them had been. He had his long snakelike body shoved through the poor man’s chest and wrapped around his waist, tail curled down the length of one leg. Two of his arms were folded pensively, six others were sharpening their claws along his plated chest but the ninth was at work below, ceaselessly, tirelessly. He had the poor man’s flickering azure soul in his mouth, seemed to chew on it like a chunk of tough beef but never swallowed.

Dean couldn’t swallow, couldn’t run, couldn’t defend himself. He was a naked soul trapped in a little iron box and there was a demon just on the other side of the fence with hungry, hungry teeth. He tried not to look at Alastair’s ninth hand, but couldn’t help it. Had spent forty years with this bastard and it was just base instinct to check, to see what shape the demon had taken that day and what kind of torture he was to expect, he cringed and lifted his eyes again, locked them with those of the demon, not the ones he was wearing like Sam had.

The demon Dean had decided to call Jail Bait handed Alastair’s new meat suit a shotgun and sneered at Sam and Dean as he backed away, chewed on the soul in his mouth and disappeared around the corner.

Dean knew what was coming, but he didn’t expect it to hurt so much. He’d caught rock salt rounds before in his body. It felt like getting shot honestly, only there was more bruising and slightly less flesh damage. Having rock salt hurled through his soul at one-thousand-six-hundred-ten feet per second was a new experience entirely. It felt like he was being ripped apart atom by atom. Like he’d just been ground zero for a fucking nuclear bomb.

To say it ‘Hurt’ would be the understatement to end all understatements. It’s was like saying Hell was torture. Both accurate and the worst possible comparison in the history of comparisons.

Dean came back he didn’t know how long later. It couldn’t have been anything more than thirty seconds, but it felt like eternity. Alastair was still standing there, gun in hand, SMILING. “Welcome back, Dean, have a nice trip?”

He felt the urge to dry heave but it was just an urge, he wasn’t really attached to anything at the moment to necessitate dry heaving. Sam said his name, didn’t look at him, but asked if he was OK.

Dean snorted out a pathetic sounding laugh; “Oh, yeah. Time of my life.”

Alastair cocked the shotgun and pointed it at Sam; “Well, go on. Why don’t you try some of your mojo on me now, hotshot?”

Sam trembled and Dean could feel the energy arching off him, could SEE IT in shades of red and yellow… and black.

“It takes two to break a seal, I had a feeling another one would show up… they’re like lemmings.”

The blast caught Dean off guard—Sam made a high shocked sound beside him and blasted out into drifting particles and flickers of color.

Alastair hummed and leaned the shotgun on his shoulder as he approached, SMILED with both his faces and chewed the soul in his mouth; “We just keep running into one another, don’t we, Dean. It’s like you’re following me around. Kind of flattering if you ask me… But… I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t likewise interested in those new shiny bits you’re packing. Kind of unusual for a human, don’t you think? Almost— almost INHUMAN if you ask me,” He clicks his tongue. “Bet they’d come in handy for the Big Party though… A guy could stir up a lot of trouble with ingredients like that.”

Sam came back with an aborted wail, arms around his stomach. Alastair aimed at him while he was down and fired again, eyes on Dean.

Dean flinched visibly, ground his teeth and wanted to reach for his brother, but Sam was gone again.

“So rude of him to interrupt our conversation,” Alastair shook his head; “Someone should teach him a lesson.”

Dean bared his teeth; “You can shoot us all you want, but you can’t kill us.”

Alastair’s smile widened, split his monstrous face; “That so?” He cocks the gun a third time, “You think leaving a blind psychic to watch over your meat is a GOOD idea?” He levels the gun at Dean’s face and pulls the trigger.

0-0-0

It starts with scratching. Faint, she wouldn’t have heard it if it weren’t so quiet, if her ears hadn’t become super sensitive, then a hushed whistling like wind through a tight space. The smell comes last, like smoke over a great distance. Bitter, rotten—Sulfur.

Pamela stood carefully, hands out and shifted toward the door, made sure the chain was pulled and the deadbolt turned. Knelt down and carefully, gently patted the salt line down its length to ensure it hadn’t been broken. Then she turned and checked the window behind the desk, giving it the same hesitant treatment. That’s when she recognized what the whistling sound was, felt the trickle of cold air coming from the adjoining room. She found the bathroom window open nothing more than a quarter inch and there was nothing on the sill. For an instant she thought maybe Sam had forgotten it, but Dean had insisted, had made his brother double check it. She bent and felt along the floor, found chunky grains everywhere and pulled her lips back from her teeth, scooped up two handfuls of it and went into the bedroom breathing slowly, carefully through her nose, winding like she remembered cats doing when she was younger. SMELLING the bastard out. The smell was strongest just outside the bathroom door but she tried to remain calm, lunged forward and kicked back at the noise behind her. Whispered fast into Sam’s ear.

A hand circled her ankle and pulled and Pamela snarled, twisted and threw one handful of salt at the demon still chanting.

The demon roared and stumbled back into a wall and when he came forward a second time Pamela let him have the other handful, lunged toward where she remembered the bottle being and found nothing.

0-0-0

Alastair had an appreciation for blades of all shapes and sized. He liked the subtle efficient beauty in sharpened steel, or in this case what looked like iron.

Dean wondered absently why it wasn’t hurting him. Hadn’t he smeared the bastard’s face with a pry bar not that long ago? Why wasn’t that hand scythe making his thin pale skin sizzle like the chain had the others?

Alastair fondles it, meets his eyes and scratches at his cheek with it, cuts off a few whiskers with the keenness of the blade.

“I told them to bring you to me alive, so you could watch. Thought it might be fun, start a conversation anyway… The bitch though, well… you know what they say about lame animals.”

“You leave her out of this you sonofabitch or I’ll—“

“Or what? Did you not learn anything on my rack, Dean? I don’t like to be threatened… Kind of a pet-peeve of mine,” He steps closer and a few of his many arms hook on the iron of the chain while a few more reach out toward Dean and scratch at the edges of himself he can’t really see. It hurts—Deep down in the very core of him it HURTS. “Anywho… The moon’s in the right spot, the board is set… Let’s get started, shall we?”

Dean sneers down at the blade as it catches and pulls on the flame like edges of him—he can see it, see how the barely there flicker is shaved at by the blade—it’s cold—BURNS leaves him aching and conscious of the singed threads where it has touched him. “You’re gonna kill a Reaper with that? It’s a little on the nose, don’t you think?”

“Is it?” Alastair brings the scythe up and presses his chin to it thoughtfully; “An old friend lent it to me… You know he doesn’t really ride a pale horse. But he does have three amigos,” He smiled with his tall teeth and turned away; “And they are just jonesing for the Apocalypse!” He kneels beside the older looking of the two Reapers and chuckles, chews a little more at the soul in his mouth; “It pays to have friends in low places.”

The Reaper wakes when he’s jerked upward, eyes wide and startled and disbelieving. Like he doesn’t even know what’s going on, maybe he doesn’t. Dean feels kind of sorry for him.

Alastair smiles and lays the scythe against the Reaper’s nape, lifts eight of his hands, turns the palms of four upward and the palms of four downward, like some grotesque spider god. He looks right at Dean when he starts speaking, keeps his ninth hand moving because no matter the destruction he causes, no matter the ruin and pain and agony and torture he unleashes he is never sated. “Don’t go anywhere, Dean, we’ve still got so much to talk about,” Then he casts his eyes down at the Reaper and starts chanting.

There is no blood. No, it’s more like lightning illuminates the inside of the Reaper’s ‘body’, shows his true billowy silverwhite form as it spasms up, mouth open wide. It’s like the Reaper is eaten up from the cut outward, just DEVOURED by nothingness in a flash.  Dean gets the vague impression of wings—not like a bird’s or a bats or even like the shadows he’s seen of Castiels or Uriel’s. These are fragile. Thin and papery like a dragonfly’s. Sharp and even intimidating to look at. They grow from the Reaper’s chest, fan back and disappear into the ether and as they NOTHINGNESS devours him Dean sees a seam open between the wings, like his ribcage is a set of French doors and LIGHT pours out—flickers and is GONE.

It feels WRONG. Everything in him is SCREAMING that this is WRONGWRONGWRONG unnaturalsicktwisted WRONGWRONGWRONG—It’s a violation of something base, something that doesn’t originate in his head or in his heart but in something deeper. Something like his DNA. There’s no thought or debate about it, he just KNOWS that it’s WRONG.

It happens completely without his permission or awareness. Some little thread still tethering him to his body pulls taut—

Across town Pamela is struggling on the floor with the demon, snarling and searching frantically for the bottle of salt she’d left under her chair. The Demon snarls and draws his knife, moves forward with black eyes locked on the blinded woman and Dean’s body twitches in its slumber, mutters a single syllable under its breath.

“Cas…”

0-0-0

The Reaper’s body relaxes back against the ground and as Alastair steps over him it begins to fall into a fine powdery ash that shines briefly like diamonds before even that residual light is snuffed out and there’s nothing left but a grey formless dry mass like carpet dust.

The demon drops to a knee by Tessa and meets Dean’s eyes directly as he pulls her up and presses the blade to her throat.

Sam’s teeth click and Dean feels his brother’s gaze like a touch, feels Sam’s intent moving his head, focusing his eyes on the light fixture dangling above the ritual space.

It’s old, probably as old as the house, maybe older… and made of iron.

Tessa shouts, reaches up and claws at the demon, commands him to stop, but Alastair presses the blade in tighter and begins to chant.

The fixture shakes and judders and Dean can feel Sam’s energy surging, pushing out toward it—but it’s not enough. Dean grinds his teeth and pushes out with everything he’s got—It feels almost like he’s trying to force a square peg in a round hole, but then suddenly—inexplicably—something in him gives, rushes out all at once and the chain snaps—the chandelier drops and burns clear through the lines making up the ritual space.

Tessa’s eyes flash and she’s gone, appears again with a gust of cool air and tosses the chain trapping Sam and Dean in place, latches a hand on their shoulders and promptly disappears.

Sam isn’t with them when they reappear on the street, Dean has no idea where his brother is, turns and looks for him with wide eyes but there’s nobody to see.

“Where’s your brother?”

“I’ll find him, you go—get outta here,” And he starts running. Shouts his brother’s name and watches streetlights flicker as he passes under them.

He turns a corner and it hits him like a bullet to the chest. A wall of pure dark hatred.

Alastair still has the scythe in his human hand, the other eight are stretched out wide, claws exposed. He tilts his heads and SMILES; “You can’t run, Dean… Not now. Not from me.”

He can almost feel his diaphragm going into quick hectic spasm. Like a drum beat, but he is only walking fog here so hiccups are kind of impossible. He thinks that might be a bonus.

“I’m inside that angsty little noggin of yours… tucked away, nice and safe. Remember our little game? Sure you do, how could you not? You think about me every night—“ And the demon’s face isn’t ghastly anymore, the body Dean sees half impaling that of the cancer patient is instead draped over his back, smiling crookedly with soft lips and eyes the wrong color. His voice isn’t hissed and spoken around chemo swollen cheeks, but smooth like coffee and low like core of the earth. It rattles Dean’s core and sends a revolted JOLT through him in the same instant.

“Come on, Dean… Didn’t we have fun?” And it’s Cas’s face, Cas’s voice, his smile and demonic white eyes.

Dean shudders, feels his soul flesh crawl and he bares his teeth; “What do you want?”

He points the scythe at Dean’s chest and makes a twisting motion; “That—“

The light is sudden and blinding—like a piece of the sun fell to earth and shoved itself down Alastair’s throat.

Dean stumbles back in shock, arm up to protect his face but he can see through it, can see what looks like a hand formed entirely of fucking LIGHTNING wrapping around Alastair and YANKING him back into nothing.

Dean breathes heavily, feels like the very air is trying to squash him and looks around in horror and confusion; “What the hell!”

“Guess again.”

Dean turns around and almost swings at the angel but stops frozen in his tracks by what he sees. “Holy Mother…”

Castiel’s head tilts and Dean can’t help but STARE.

He doesn’t see Castiel’s wings, doesn’t see much of anything more unusual than if he were just some regular person. It’s the glow, it’s the fact that Castiel has four arms. Two are aligned with the arms of his vessel, the other two are held close, cradling the shimmering ball of his vessel’s soul close to him, protecting it. The color radiating outward from it is mint green tinged in gold, but the light the Angel exudes is not. It’s similar in intensity to the light Anna had given off when her grace had taken hold again, but where that had HURT this—this does not.

The light the angle gives off is the same color as starlight on snow. It glitters like a million galaxies, reminds Dean of the December before he turned twenty, off on a hunt in North Dakota. He’d stopped on the side of the road to relieve himself, stood there watching steam rise from the puddle growing around the base of the fence post he’d chosen and caught something spectacular from the corner of his vision. He’d seen the night sky before, but never in a place where it was not lessened in its beauty by the lights of cities and homes. There wasn’t anybody for miles here and the whole sky was lit up. MILLIONS of silvery pinpricks flashing and dancing against a dark blue field shot through in some places with indigo and midnight purple. He had never considered, before that moment, that the sky was anything but flat black behind the stars. He had never been so wrong, never been so glad to be wrong.

Castiel, where he peeked out of his vessel, put that brilliance to shame.

Dean could see the colorless flickers of himself reaching out desperately and couldn’t control it, felt it deeper than his bones, deeper than his gut. It sank into that hollow in his chest and turned it wrong-side out.

Castiel’s brows scrunched and he stepped closer, too close really, but when he did the color faded out against the absence of Dean’s, faded it to barely noticeable and Dean found he could breathe again, even if he didn’t really need to without his body.

“You did well, Dean… You and Sam saved a seal. We captured Alastair—“

Dean shakes himself, tries to step back but as he does the color of the angel flares again and he finds himself shifting forward so he can focus on borrowed eyes instead of it. “Where were you? What, you don’t help unless you find it first?”

“What makes you say that?”

Dean swallows and lets his breath out; “Were you here? Was—was this another one of your stupid tests? Sit back and watch us flail around like chickens with our heads cut off?”

Castiel breathes deep and his eyes flash with blue-white light; “I was present for enough of it, yes… But no, this was not another test.

“Well, thanks for your help with the rock salt and the chains,” His chest flares and he can feel that WRONGNESS radiating out again. That pain and violation he’d felt when the Reaper had been killed. “Why couldn’t you have swooped in a little earlier, huh?”

“That script on the funeral home, we couldn’t penetrate it,” He turns his head, watches a man in a gray track-suit with a headlamp on over his ski hat jog past. Dean turns and looks as well, sees a long flag like trail following the man in bright yellow-orange. It seems to point to Castiel as he passes, arches out like it wants to go to him, then shrinks away as he continues down the block.

“So, that stuff—those symbols. That was angel proofing?”

Castiel nods, turns and looks right at him again; “Why do you think I recruited you and Sam in the first place?”

“You recruited us?” Deans scoffs.

“That wasn’t your friend Bobby who called, Dean. It wasn’t Bobby who told Sam about the seal.”

“It was you?”

His lips tighten and he looks away, focuses on the ground and Dean thinks he might want to scuff his toe against the dirt and mutter ‘darn it’ under his breath, thinks Castiel looks a little like Dennis the Menace and he almost wants to laugh.

“If you wanted our help, why the hell didn’t you just ask? Manipulating people isn’t how you get what you want—“

“Because whatever I ask, you seem to do the exact opposite.”

Dean knows that look, that’s the ‘I don’t understand you’ look Cas had given him. It’s identical down to the angle of his eyebrows and the incline of his head. Dean’s missed it. Missed the sound of his voice and the warmth of a touch that is actually CAS not Alastair wearing his likeness, he inhales slowly and turns away to expel it; “So, what? Now people in this town just start dying again?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because that is the natural order of things—“

“These are good people, Cas. They deserve to live. They deserve to wake up tomorrow with the people they love not just fall over dead. It’s not their faults this happened… Can’t you just—just make a few exceptions?”

“To everything, there is a season—“

“You made an exception for me.”

Castiel looks at him, doesn’t blink; “You’re different.”

“What if I don’t want to be different?”

“It’s not a choice you get to make, Dean. You simply ARE.”

He swallows, kind of wants to feel nauseous, but isn’t; “And what if I don’t want to BE anymore… What if—what if I’m tired of BEING… What if I just want to end it?”

“Are you suggesting—“

“I mean, what if I want to hop a ride on the good ship Grim Reaper? What if I wanna check out? Is that—Does that rule still apply to me or am I an exception to that as well?”

Castiel’s brows pull in and he leans closer, like he couldn’t quite hear what had been said.

“Can I still die?” He grinds his teeth, “Whatever happened to me, when you were—were putting me back in my body… Did that change me? Am I—am I still human?”

Castiel’s shoulders droop a little and his expression seems monumentally sad; “Dean—“

“What’d you do to me, Cas?”

He swallows and for an instant he looks genuinely afraid, “Nothing,” and he’s gone, takes half a step back and is swallowed by the nothingness.

Tessa is standing there when Dean looks up again. She reaches out and touches his arm and he can feel himself reaching for her. She says his name softly and meets his eyes; “I could use your help.”

Cole is standing outside the kitchen with his arms crossed and his shoulders hunched. His mother is sitting at the table with his scrapbook sobbing over the images and calling his name over and over and over. It breaks something loose in Dean’s chest and he wants to just—just grab the poor woman and tell her that it gets easier, even if it is a lie.

“Why won’t anybody tell me what’s on the other side?”

Tessa smiles kindly; “Maybe nobody wants to ruin the surprise.”

Dean snorts.

Cole takes a step away from her, arms crossed defensively over his chest. The TV in the corner of the room flickers and the sound begins to distort. “That’s not an answer.”

“She won’t answer you. Reapers never do. But trust me, staying here is a whole lot worse than anything over there.”

“Why?”

He swallows, breathes in and lets it out slowly, motions to the boy’s mother; “Because one day your family will be gone and there will be nothing left here for you but pain and loneliness and hatred.”

The kid turns and looks at his mother, watches how she’s pulling at her own hair in despair. The raw unending HURT in her.

Dean can see there’s barely any color left to her, just little transparent jags tinged in what had perhaps once been pink, can see how Cole’s reaches out and seems to tear away bits and pieces in an attempt to sustain their connection.

“It’s okay to be scared—“

“I’m not scared—“ He draws his lower lip between his teeth and gnaws on it compulsively.

Dean shrugs one shoulder up toward his ear and tilts his head to meet the boy’s eyes; “We’re all scared. That’s the big secret. We’re all scared.”

The boy scowls at him, like he’s trying to blast Dean out of existence and the lights flicker around the house wildly—

Mara’s voice hitches and comes out on a helpless, agonized sob and everything stops.

Cole shifts uneasily on his feet and when he looks at Dean again there’s something terrified but resolute in his eyes; “Are you coming?”

Dean’s jaw twitches and he tries to smile, but it doesn’t quite happen; “Oh, I’m sure I’ll be there sooner than you think.”

Cole gives his mother one last look and Dean watches as he seems to shrink in on himself and burns brightly in his core as he approaches Tessa, bows his head and slots himself between her arms.

It’s almost the same as when the Reaper had burned out in the funeral home, but where that had seemed so—so WRONG, this felt like letting out a deep breath. When Dean opened his eyes the boy was gone and Tessa seemed to glow from within.

“You look out for that boy,” Dean points at her, swallows because he feels like his throat should ache and maybe it does a little.

She turned and spoke softly, her voice echoed like it was coming from far away; “You look out for yourself, Dean.”

“What do you mean?”

She steps closer and he can feel her like a magnetic force, “I’ve been around Death from the get-go. You know what I see most?”

He shakes his head a little.

“Lies,” Her eyes narrow and appear sad; “’He’s in a better place’, ‘At least they’re together now’… You all lie to yourselves, Dean,” Her hand lifts and hovers over his chest, “Because, like you said, deep down, you’re all scared.”

He grinds his teeth and stares down at his chest, can’t see anything at all.

“Stop lying to yourself, Dean,” She purses her lips, “You know, deep down, that nothing is free. Not even forgiveness.”

Dean feels a weird knot growing in his chest, a constriction of his lungs that is more physical than anything he’s felt all day.

“They want something from you. And for them to just pull you out of hell? It’s gonna be something big.”

“Tessa—“

“You don’t believe in miracles any more than I do—“ Her fingers make contact with his shirt front and her expression takes on a pensive quality, “—The universe doesn’t work like that… Everything has a price. Nothing’s free.”

Something’s buzzing in his ear, like a mosquito but his limbs feel heavy and he can’t swat at it.

“What is it?” His tongue feels numb, “Tessa, what do you see?”

Her lips move but there is no sound, nothing but the chanting; Pamela’s voice, strained, hissed and wet through gritted teeth.

Pamela’s sitting on Sam’s bed with her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms around her middle when Dean gasps himself awake again. Her fingernails are torn and bloody and her lower lip is cut and swollen, the left lens of her glasses cracked.

Sam’s standing at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed and there’s a dead guy in the corner.

Her breathing is labored, quick uneven little sips of air and when Dean turns to her she bares her teeth at him; “Take me home.”

His teeth click together so sharply he nips the end of his tongue. She’s radiating energy, SMOTHERING him with it, smothering everything.

There’s salt sprayed all over the room, the lines in the doorways and on the windowsills are gone and there are faint scorch marks on the corpse’s lips and eyes.

Pamela snarls the words again; “Take me home NOW you sonofabitch.”

Sam flinches back from her voice as if it hurts his ears and meets Dean’s eyes apologetically.

Dean clears his throat and speaks slowly, carefully; “Okay.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

 

 


	14. High Hopes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween!
> 
> pleasedonthateme

0-0-0

The swelling has gone down, that’s good, now there’s just a gross looking scab matting some of his hair to his head. Dean can’t help but pick at it, can’t help but lean against the window and scratch at the edges.

“Stop it,” Sam swats at his elbow. “You’ll make yourself bleed.”

“Itches.”

“That doesn’t mean you gotta make it bleed again,” He rubs his face, shakes his head and refocuses on the road.

Dean makes a wet spluttering noise between his lips and when Sam starts snuffling dramatically Dean edges the box of tissues toward his brother and tries to ignore the disgusting sound effects.

“You gonna pout the whole way there?” Sam’s wringing the tissue in one nostril and Dean thinks it’s kind of funny but can’t find it in him to laugh.

“I’m not pouting.”

“Yes, you are and I don’t exactly get why… It all worked out, didn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah, sure…” He can still hear Pamela’s voice, growled and threatening, feel the push of her against his mind and that—whateveritwas—in his chest.

_‘I don’t ever want to see either of you again, do you understand me? So help me if I even HEAR your names I—‘_ Her finger had shaken where she was brandishing it in their general direction. She motioned violently toward the door and bared her teeth, the split in her lower lip was bleeding again but she didn’t seem to care; _‘Get out of my house!’_

They’d gone but she’d shouted after them loud enough that Dean could hear it even through the doors of the car.

_‘You tell Bobby Singer he can go to Hell for ever introducing us, you hear me!’_

Then she’d swung back into her house and slammed the door so hard the windows shook.

Dean had had a migraine for two days afterward, like she’d been in his head scratching at his brains.

Bobby was pissed. They’d lost him one of his only and most powerful contacts in less than twenty-four hours.

“Dean, are you even listening?”

“Hmm?” He blinked slowly. “You say somethin’?”

Sam rolled his eyes; “Look, I know Ruby’s not exactly on your Christmas list, but if she can help us get to Lilith—”

Dean looked away again, propped his jaw on his fist and pushed the fingers of his free hand back into his hair searching for the ITCHING edges of the wound. “Whatever, man. Work with Ruby, don’t… I don’t really give a rat’s ass.”

Sam rubbed his forehead; “What’s your problem? You usually go all Cujo when I mention Ruby.”

“You want me to freak out?”

“No, but—“

“Then just drop it.”

Sam exhaled and rubbed his forehead; “You really must feel like shit if you’re already getting all PMS on me.”

“I feel fine.”

“Whatever.”

It takes another three hours before they get to Cheyenne. Dean’s physically lagging by then, hefts his duffle onto his shoulder and coughs wetly into his fist before he follows Sam to the room. “Home, crappy, home—“

And then Sam clicks on the light.

Uriel looks like he’s got a new suit. Same color as the old one, but this one looks weirdly silkier. Less like wool and more like—well, SILK. Castiel is standing against the far wall with his hands in his pockets and his eyes locked on an image of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback hanging over the bed farthest from the door.  His jaw is tense and he looks strangely blank. Kind of like he’s just part of the décor.

Dean drops his bag and his hands fall to his sides, smack audibly against his thighs; “Aw, come on…”

Uriel just continues to gaze into him; “You are needed.”

“We just got back from ‘needed’!”

Uriel’s eyebrows lift and he tilts his head forward then back imperiously; “Now, you mind your tone with me.”

Dean feels that weird tightening in his throat again and breathes deeply, focuses himself like Cole had taught him— “No, you mind your damned tone with us!” –and _pushed._

There was a flicker. Tiny, microscopic really, but it was there and the pressure Uriel was expressing withdrew.

Sam could feel it, Dean knew somehow and he didn’t try to step between them, but did raise his voice loud enough to make his point; “Okay, we get it. We’re needed… Is there any way it can wait until morning. Dean and me—we’re exhausted and I don’t know about angels, but humans—“ He motioned to himself and Dean, “—we gotta sleep.”

Uriel appraised him like one may find inspiration in dog shit on the bottom of their shoe and spoke down the length of his nose at Sam; “I don’t think I said anything about you… We only need him.”

Dean’s jaws clenched and his fists shook. “Well come back tomorrow—“

“We raised you out of Hell for OUR purposes—“

“And what purposes were those again? What exactly do you want from me?”

“Start with gratitude.”

Dean SMILES at him and Sam can feel something rising up, like a tidal wave. It has never been this clear before. Yeah, he’s felt when Dean’s gotten angry before, you can see it in his face, but this time it’s different. Dean picked something up in Greybull. Sam doesn’t know what it was, but somehow—for some reason Dean’s glare packs a little more of a punch now than it did before.

But it’s nowhere near enough to combat what’s standing before them. It’s like throwing a match at a volcano, there’s no comparison, but Dean is suddenly one ballsy little match and he’s about two seconds away from clocking an angel.

Sam puts a hand on his brother’s chest and says his name carefully; “Let it go, man… just let it go.”

“Dean, we know this is difficult to understand—“ Castiel’s voice is calm, commanding but at the same time somehow placating but then Uriel, flying phallus that he is, decides to finish the sentence for himself.

“—And we _don’t care,”_ He turns and regards Castiel like one would a child just learning to speak that requires instruction.

 Castiel’s eyes lower and he turns to face the other wall again.

Dean watches him, feels a strange stirring in his chest, something like sympathy and protectiveness.

Uriel nudges him again, seems to grab his head and turn him until Dean is looking at him, but he withdraws before Dean can push him away once more. “Now, seven angels have been murdered. All of them from our Garrison. The last one was killed tonight.”

Dean rubs wearily at his jaw; “Demons?”

Uriel tosses his head and his shoulders bob upward again. Dean flicks his eyes to Castiel but finds the other angel stoically gazing at the beds again. Not even so much as a twitch.

“How they doin’ it?”

“We don’t know.”

Sam waves a hand into the conversation; “I’m sorry, but what do you want us to do about it? I mean, a demon with the juice to ice angels has to be out of our league!”

“We can handle the demons, thank you very much. “

“Once we find whoever it is,” Castiel is looking at them again, watching Dean’s every move and reaction.

Dean inhales and shifts closer to the table; “So, you need our help hunting a demon?”

Castiel’s head shakes a little, like he’s trying to decide if he should shrug, nod or say no. It reminds Sam of a dog leaning its head back so it can reach to scratch, it’s such an awkward gesture he has to look away.

“Not quite,” He settles on lifting his chin; “We have Alastair.”

Dean patted the table; “Great, he should be able to name your trigger man. Problem solved.”

“But he won’t talk.”

Of course not. Dean scratched at the side of his head.

Castiel gestures minutely as he speaks; “Alastair’s will is very strong… We’ve arrived at an impasse.”

“Yeah, well he’s like a black belt in torture. I mean, you guys are a little out of your league.”

Uriel’s grin is unpleasant. Entirely internalized but shining through his eyes ; “That’s why we’ve come to his student.”

Dean felt his pupils dilate and his vision shrank in at the edges but to his credit he stayed solidly on his feet.

“You happen to be the most qualified interrogator we’ve got.”

He’s shaking his head before Uriel’s even done speaking.

“Dean.”

It’s the voice, soft and so—so human sounding. When he looks up he doesn’t see an angel, he sees his Cas standing there looking at him just like he had in the front seat of the Impala. His eyes were pleading but veiled and there was tension between his brows, across the bridge of his nose and in his jaws. Like it was taking everything he had not to let his lip tremble. It hit Dean right below the heart and twisted upward like a knife.

“Dean, you’re our best hope…”

“No,” He shakes his head, says it again and feels like he’s dying inside when Cas flinches a little; “No way,” It hurts to breathe, hurts to feel his heart beating in his chest; “You—you can’t ask me to do this, Cas… Not this.”

Uriel steps between them smiling unpleasantly wider than before; “Who said anything about asking?”

Uriel grabs him, a little too roughly as matter of fact and the pull is undeniable. A quick hard YANK and Dean isn’t standing in the hotel room anymore. Dean’s standing in a warehouse somewhere with naked bulbs and he can hear water dripping.

For an instant, before he opens his eyes, he thinks it’s all been a dream. Hell, the angels, Cas and Castiel… Thinks blissfully that it was all just one djinn fueled nightmare. But then he opens his eyes and finds himself staring into Uriel’s disapproving face.

There’s a saying about having the rug pulled out from under one’s feet. Dean knows that feeling well by now, so well it barely even registers as something other than disappointment.

The place smells of ancient rotting blood and cold damp. Like old freezers in bad hotel rooms.

Dean sets his jaw and heads for the exit but Uriel WHOOSHES into his path no matter which way he turns.

Castiel stands there quietly staring at the floor and waiting.

Then there’s the voice. Barely audible, high and playful—mocking.

“I’m waiting!” A laugh, “Maybe this _is_ the torture—Not very imaginative, ladies, you could have at least been a little bit thoughtful. Maybe a drip for my forehead, or a holy water enema—Ooo that sounds _lovely.”_

Castiel moves first, tilts his head toward the door and peers in through a tiny window set at eye level.

Dean swallows back the ache in his throat and approaches. Cautiously peers in, listens while Castiel speaks, explains the situation.

“This devil’s trap is old Enochian… He’s bound completely.”

Dean still can’t breathe right and a slow burn is beginning to build below his lungs. He swallows air in hopes of easing the pressure; “Fascinating…” He turns and makes for the door again. “Now take me back.”

Uriel is grinning. “I don’t think you understand—“

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” Dean walks past him without a glance; “If you two feathery assholes won’t take me back I’ll fuckin’ walk—“

And Uriel is suddenly there in front of him again, SNEERING. “Angels are dying, boy—“

“Everybody dies… It’s the nature of things— But hey, I get it. You’re all-powerful, you can make me do whatever you want. But you _can’t_ make me do this!”

“This is too much to ask, I know. But we have to ask it.”

The eyes again and his tie—Fuck.

Dean scratches at the wound on his head and tries to look away, can’t and feels panic bubbling up in his chest like bile. His breath shudders in and out and he turns to Uriel and speaks, doesn’t look at him because he can’t right at the moment. “I want to talk to Cas alone.”

Uriel lifts his brows; “Really?”

Dean grinds his teeth; “If you want a snowball’s chance of me going in there then you’re gonna shag ass and let us talk!”

Uriel tilts his chin up and makes eye contact with the other angel Something is said. Dean doesn’t know what it is, but it’s Something. Capital ‘S’ and all.

Uriel closes his mouth and opens it again shaped around different words; “I think I’ll go seek revelation. We might have some further orders.”

Castiel glances away and back again.

Dean eyes the grin on his face and wrinkles his nose; “Well, get some doughnuts while you’re out.”

Uriel rolls his eyes and turns to go.

“Jelly… not cream filled.”

It’s kind of weird making the asshole laugh but Dean honestly couldn’t care less, he’s on auto pilot at the moment, has his fingers squeezed into his palms until he feels blood under his nails. He doesn’t even really hear Uriel’s quip about starting to like him.

He talks at first just because he can. Says things he forgets saying just seconds after they’re past his lips and wraps his arms around his middle.

Castiel stands still, hands loose at his sides, eyes narrowed and vigilant.

Calm comes slowly but Dean finds it buried there deep, finds it in memories of what he’d glimpsed while Ghost Walking. How Castiel’s ‘aura’ or whatever it was, had been the same color as the night sky over open fields in winter. Dean speaks under his breath, unable to find his voice fully at that moment; “What’s going on, Cas?” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder; “Since when does Uriel put a leash on you, huh? I thought you were the Flying Badass.”

Castiel pulls his lower lip between his teeth and lets it go. “My superiors have begun to question my sympathies.”

“What the hell’s that mean?”

“I was getting too close to the humans in my charge… You. Even your brother.”

Dean blinks in surprise.

“They feel I’ve begun to express emotions—”

He remembers Anna’s words and takes half a step back to stare at the angel.

Castiel continues, keeps glancing to the side like maybe something’s there, just out of his field of vision. “—The doorways to doubt… This can impair my judgment.”

“So they knock you down the ladder and put Uriel in charge?”

“He is a proud and able instrument of God.”

“Doesn’t it get your lointcloth in a twist?”

“It… it is what is to be,” He turns and squares his shoulders.

Dean can almost see him returning to parade rest, like a comfort thing… Like sometimes when the nightmares get too much Dean pulls the blankets over his head and draws his knees toward his chin.

“Cas,” He shakes his head, can’t believe he’s hearing this or that a few weeks ago he would have given his left nut to be purged of emotions. Part of him still would. “Cas… You—you do not want me doing this. If you trust me on nothing else, trust me on this.”

“Want it? No… But I’ve been told we need it.”

Dean turns from the door and finds himself pressed up close, just barely six inches from the Angel, breathing the same air, feeling the warmth of his borrowed skin; “What about you? What—what do YOU want?”

Castiel looks at him and it’s there—it’s RIGHT THERE and Dean can FEEL it too! He can’t help but picture his Cas looking up at him and the next thing he knows he’s got his fingers hooked loose and easy against Castiel’s, has leaned in until his shoulder and hip are aligned with angel’s and if he just dropped his head forward it would rest against his collar bone. Dean worries nervously at his lower lip with his teeth. He looks at the door and it’s almost like he can see black tendrils growing like vines out from around it, reaching for him… Clawing and HUNGRY. He can FEEL what’s waiting on the other side, what’s pushing to get out from INSIDE him and it’s almost too much to deal with. “Please…” The words hitch in his throat and he can’t blink, can’t look away from that DOOR because it might get him while he’s not focused on it, “Please, Cas,” His teeth chatter like he’s cold and he can feel himself shaking, “Please, don’t make me do this… What I did… What I _became_ — If I open that door and walk through it… you will not like what walks back out.”

And just like that the heat in the other’s skin is gone, the fingers looped between Dean’s are retreating. There is a separation. A rejection; “I would give anything not to have you do this.”

“Cas—“

“I’m not what you want me to be, Dean… I am an Angel of the Lord, not a fantasy. Nor a shoulder for you to weep on… You Know what will happen if we don’t win this war. You KNOW what will come if we fail… I must perform my duty above all else to prevent that end—and so must you.”

0-0-0

The cart was a gift, the Angel hadn’t said so, but why else would someone give him a wrapped secret?

The last present anybody had given him was the knife that had broken him, embedded in his chest. He’d used it well.

Dean’s heart is beating unevenly, too quick and shallow and he can’t find a rhythm in it to coordinate his breaths. He doesn’t look up, can’t. Needs to find his center before he starts this or it won’t end clean. He has to end this **clean** or it throws off the whole fucking theme of the piece.

Alastair is singing… Berlin. Fucking _prick._

His heart slows gradually and his breaths even out, ease into the rhythm he’s found, like a sway, to and fro, back and forth, come and go. Stab and twist.

Alastair laughs when he pulls back the tarp covering his gift, titters like a school girl. He flips his fingers dismissively; “I’m sorry. This is a very serious very emotional situation for you—“ He throws back his head and cackles and Dean finally looks at him.

It’s like there’s a wave of heat surrounding him, shimmering and twisting and Dean barely sees the human shape Alastair’s wearing now, he sees the demon, all nine arms pulled back, his form shrunk and wasted to fit the dimensions of humanity. He’s still erect, leaking, never sated and his chest pulses with fetid breath. Heaves in and out as the ruined parasitic flesh attached to his back presses deeper and deeper into the iron he’s lashed to.

Vaguely, some locked down quivering portion of Dean’s mind wonders why the iron isn’t burning him, remembers bashing his face in with something as simple as a pry bar and doing more damage than the Angel had.

“I shouldn’t laugh, it’s just that—I mean… are they _serious?”_ He smiles with all his rotten jagged teeth, inhales and it rattles like a burning engine in his chest; “They sent YOU to torture ME?”

“You got one chance. One.”

“Oohhh,” He writhes and arches his hips forward searching for friction.

“Tell me who’s killing the angels.”

The black eel of his tongue roves over his lips and slithers down his chest, swipes at his nipples and curls up over his face before it reels back into his mouth with a grotesque chomp of teeth.

Dean leans in close, meets the demons eyes and breathes in the sulfuric heat of his skin; “I want a name.”

Alastair meets his gaze evenly; “Think I’ll see all your scary toys and spill my guts?” He snorts and Dean can smell the hellfire burning in his lungs.

“Oh, you’ll spill your guts, one way or another. I just didn’t wanna ruin my shoes,” He tilts his head and SMILES. “Now answer the question.”

“Or what? You’ll work me over?” His tongue flicks out again and he catches it with his teeth, breathes in around it with a hiss; “But then, maybe you don’t want to… Maybe you’re _a-scared to_ ,” He sings it, sneers with both faces and arches his hips out a little further.

“I’m here aren’t I?”

“Not entirely… You left part of yourself back in the pit, didn’t you,” He hisses in another breath, draws it over his tongue and tastes it; “Remember? You used to scream for it to stop, used to cry and beg— _‘No, no—Cas, please no!’_ but then you stopped. You remember that? You accepted it—you _let me_ —You WANTED it. Now that’s sick. Real sick—Uh-huh…” He smiles, “Oh, the things you’d let me do to you… Little bit of Stockholm Syndrome in its finest— Tell me, did you let your Angel out there know what we did? Does he know how you would beg for it? How you just opened yourself up and gave those quiet, intimate little moments up like kittens at a yard sale,” His breath rattles. “You remember the picture album, Dean? I remember the picture album… You left that there for me, you know… Left your dignity tucked right into the pages like a love note,” He snaps his teeth in Dean’s direction; “Come on, let’s see if we can find him, shall we? That poor dumb fuck who believed his Cas was gonna come save him. Who held on to the hope that somebody _wuvved_ him even while I tore him open with my bare hands and fucked him like the pathetic waste of good menstrual blood he was… Let’s see if we can get the two of you back together, huh? Little heart to heart? I bet he’d just LOVE to see what you’ve become.”

Dean tilted his head, “You’re gonna be disappointed.”

He hummed in the back of his throat and started grinding back against the iron and thrusting forward into the dead air before him. “Oh, you have not disappointed me so far,” He rolled his head back and regarded Dean from tilted eyes; “Come on… you gotta want a little pay back for everything I did to you… I started every day with a bagel a chai latte and your genitals on a fucking plate, that’s gotta make you angry… Every day for forty _years_ watching and powerless to stop me from emasculating you… I mean… yikes. Way to bruise a guy’s ego… Can you even still get it up or are you too scared? Viagra not help? No? That’s too bad. Maybe you should see somebody about that. You know this disease riddled little shit I’m wearing was a school guidance counselor… Maybe he could help… Oh, George!” He hummed sadly, “That’s right… Little bitch snatched him…” He chomps his teeth, rattles the chains and lets out a disappointed sigh.

Dean’s heart is a slow waltz behind his ribs.

“But we had more fun than that. Lots more! Like that time I filled you with gasoline and set you on fire—Remember the smell? Like good barbecue! Or the drowning—I loved the drowning. Never gets old… But those were just the Big Things… let’s not forget all the little pokes and prods… the vivisections and autopsies… that time I peeled your skin off inch by inch and counted each one of your cute little freckles?” A low chuckle; “What about the time I made you think I had Sammy—Dear little Sammy—“ A laugh, he can’t help himself, “—OH the sounds you made when you thought I had your brother tied up next to you! When you thought he’d managed to Deal and get you out? Or when he picked up the knife? Who knew family time could be so fun, huh? Woulda worked too if I didn’t like our ‘What’s Sammy Up to Now’ commentary more… No?” He hummed thoughtfully, “Oh, I’ve got it! What about the fact that everything I did to you… I did to your daddy first.”

Dean’s fingers curled into his palms and his teeth squeezed together so hard they popped.

“Funny thing though. I had your pop on my rack for close to a century.”

“You can’t stall forever,” Dean isn’t sure if he’s saying it to himself or to the demon, he grinds his teeth to keep from speaking again. Has to keep quiet. Has to stay calm. Just do it, get it over with and it’s done. No more. Never again. It doesn’t count if he doesn’t want it, just like Jamie had said.  

“John Winchester made a good name for himself. A hundred years!” Another thoughtful hum, “I started each session same way I did with you, only English Muffins and black coffee were the thing at the time. And the first thing he did when I came over was spit in my face,” He hummed again, cooed. “Afterward I’d make him the same offer I made you. I’d put down my blade if he picked one up—“

“Just give me the demon’s name, Alastair.”

“—But he said _nein_ each and every time like a good soldier. Oh, damned if I couldn’t break him…” He sighed wistfully; “I pulled out all the stops too! But John… John was made of something unique. The stuff of heroes…”

Dean peeled off his jacket and stuffed it under the table, rolled up the sleeves of his outer shirt and focused on keeping the Rhythm. Keeping the beat.

 “He talked about you sometimes you know, when the pain got to be too much, or when I… when I poked a little at that juicy brain of his—You wouldn’t believe the war stories he had—WOW! I don’t get inspired often by humanity. It’s tough when you’ve been around as long as I have… But the things he talked about were just too nice to pass up,” He rattled in his chest again and tilted his head in the opposite direction; “And then came Dean!” A snort, “Oh, Dean _Winchester._ I thought I was up against it again! But! Daddy’s little girl… he _broke!”_ His tongue flashed out over his chest again, strained toward his erection but couldn’t quite reach, smacked fruitlessly against his stomach a few times and pulled back between his teeth with a wet plopping noise, like guts hitting the floor or a fist pulling out of a fresh wound. “He broke in THIRTY,” Another rumbling, fiery breath, like the back build of some furnace; “Just not the man your daddy wanted you to be, huh, Dean?”

Holy water. Syringes… Showtime.

Alastair’s breath hitched and he settled against his chains with a hum of satisfaction; “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

0-0-0

He can see it plainly in his head. The urge, the NEED, the compound fearreverencesadnesshelplessness. It had a taste that slipped like wind over him. Sour and lonely and frightened. He could identify the human emotions easily enough, but it was something else entirely to _feel_ them. It was sour in his core, like a wound left to putrefy. Knowing logically what something was and experiencing it were two vastly different things.

Castiel knew how to love, how to care for something or a human placed in his charge. Had known it since he became aware of his existence and his ability to think, to praise and fight and defend. He had not known that there was more to it than what was engrained into everything he was.

Humans had ‘love’ what was considered a base animalistic version of the purity angels felt. Something twisted by lust and greed and the biological. But the first time Dean saw the face of his vessel something completely different had shot off like a projectile and lodged itself in Castiel’s core. Love and fear and shame and a sense of self-disgust. The memories came in waves after that. Rushes of sense-memory. The innocent non-sensual contact of hands and fingers and the clasp of arms, tastes of food and drink. Proximity and gentle touches during rest. A sense of security and belonging and trust—There was lust, oh yes, there was lust. Intense memories of the press of FLESH, mouths clashing and fingers gripping but it was so buried in the shame and fear and pain it was unrecognizable. Something so twisted and ruined that the very presence of it in Dean’s thoughts sometimes sent him physically reeling.

Castiel had felt fear before. Fear of his Father, fear of being captured by demons. Fear of disobeying… But this fear Dean had experienced was something MORE. That was it really, everything humans felt was MORE. Sharper, keener, GREATER. It was too much, too GREAT to be withstood and yet these fragile little things underwent rapid violent fluctuations of them in such horrifically powerful degrees. How did they continue to exist without tearing themselves apart because of it?

Castiel didn’t want to feel like this. He didn’t understand and that, perhaps, was the greatest sin.

Alastair was screaming. Not shouting expletives in search of attention, but actually SCREAMING.

Castiel reached out carefully, curiously, brushed the thin delicate edges of his grace near Dean Winchester’s being and recoiled, found himself staring at the doorway shaking because there was no sign of that gentleness Dean had expressed earlier. None of the fear and tentative need he had felt when Dean’s fingers curled around those of his vessel.

Dean had looked at him pleadingly and called him by the name of a dream. Put the face of an illusion over his own and begged it for mercy like a false idol… and for a moment, however fleeting, Castiel had wanted to be that for him.

Now, all of that was shoved down, restrained and slowly torn apart—

The noise from the other room rose, a shaking crescendo that held for far too long.

_“Just give me the name—“_

_“Puddin’ tame. Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same,”_ Wet laughter. 

More screams.

Castiel wanted it to end. He knew they needed the name, needed to stop the attacks on his brothers and sisters… but Dean’s words rang in his head, resounded throughout his grace.

_There’s no such thing as ‘acceptable collateral damage’… Just death. And if you have to factor in even one innocent person in order to take out the bad guy—in my book, it’s not worth it._

Dean had done horrible things in Hell and Heaven was making him do them again, making that black yawning pit of self-hatred and doubt and soul sickness in Dean grow and grow and grow.

It—it wasn’t right.

The light above his head fizzled and popped and Castiel turned slowly to regard the figure at the other end of the room.

She shone brilliantly but looked so different, had changed herself. Altered herself to bear more resemblance to a human.

“You shouldn’t be here. We still have orders to kill you.”

She rocked on her feet, “Somehow, I don’t think you’ll try.”

His head bows, chin to his chest and he feels himself sag, diminish.

“Where’s Uriel?” She circles to his right and hops up to sit on the table before him, swings her legs and bites her lip.

“He went to receive revelation.”

She nods and meets his eyes; “Right,” She bites her lips again and breathes deep; “Why are you letting Dean do this?”

He presses his palms to his legs and rocks a little, shifts himself physically away from her because the proximity is unsettling. “He’s doing God’s work.”

“Torturing? That’s God’s work? Stop him, Cas. Please. Can’t you feel what it’s doing to him? You of all of us should feel it most.”

He shakes his head; “He is doing what must be done. There is no shame in that—“

“It’s killing him, Cas… Can’t you feel it? Or are you too dead inside to hear him?”

He could hear him. Every thought and fear and flash of sensation that had no name, Castiel could feelseehear it all, not just because Dean was human and didn’t know how to exist quietly, but because he was Close. Too _Close._

Heaven was right, Castiel had compromised himself. He had to maintain distance. He couldn’t let the condition progress any further than it already had.

“You’re thinking loudly, Castiel…”

He ground his teeth; “What do you want of me?”

“I want you to wake up and SEE what this is doing to Dean. You touched him—YOU raised him up and it’s YOU he cleaved to when Uriel tried to put him back into his body. YOU, Castiel—You had to leave part of yourself with him to keep him from completely shattering.  I know you did it from a sense of duty, but you can SEE it now, can’t you. When you look at him… You can see how BEAUTIFUL it’s become because of him and he’s in there destroying himself—”

“Anna—“

“It may be part of him now, Cas. But you can still feel it… you can feel everything he does if you would just let yourself—“

“You know why I can’t. If I could undo what was done, I would.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“If I was able to I would take it back— This… FEELING is unbearable.”

Anna’s breath comes out softly, he can feel the smile on her lips. Gentle, tender, forgiving in a way she has no right to be. “That’s called Fear, Castiel… Fear as humans know it.”

He shudders in the face of it, arms around his chest. “It’s God’s will. We are not meant to question it. The plan is just and must be obeyed—“ He turns and forces his arms down, pushes it all back as far as he can; “Who are we to question the will of God?”

“Unless this isn’t his will.”

“Then where do the orders come from?”

“I don’t know. One of our superiors, maybe, but not Him. The Father you love, do you think he wants this? Do you think he’d ask THIS of you? To standby and watch while an innocent man destroys himself? Do you think THIS is righteous?” She shifts closer, presses in so they can feel one another. Their graces pulsed in frantic time and Castiel could feel the effect it was having on his vessel. The heart was beating like a war drum, his stomach was twisted up and a sour uneasy sensation had settled high in his stomach, flooding the back of his throat with a bitter unnatural taste.

“That,” Anna’s voice was low, careful, “What you’re feeling right now? It’s called Doubt… These orders are wrong and you know it. I know it… But you can do the right thing. You’re afraid, Cas. I was too. But together—”

Her skin feels wrong against his, strange and too fragile. He pulls away and his heart beats all the harder. “Together? I am NOTHING like you. You FELL. You rebuked our Father and Rebelled!”

“I did what I felt was right.”

 “Go—“

“Cas—“

Castiel wraps his grace around himself, like a child covering their ears and speaks all the louder, charges his words with his Intent and flings them at her; **_“GO!”_**

She looks at him, sad and accepting and leaves.

0-0-0

Alastair sags back against his bonds and spits a mixture of holy water, blood and ectoplasm in Dean’s face. “You’re just not getting deep enough. You lack the resources… The gusto, though—that’s nice. Could use some work, but at least you’re trying now, it’s just—Well, reality is just, I don’t know, too _concrete_ up here. It’s kind of hard to let your imagination stretch when you’re all boxed in with these three puny dimensions.”

He steps away, swipes a hand over the mess on his face and stares at it as it drips slowly off his palm—only notices then how badly he’s shaking.

“Honestly, Dean… You have no idea how bad it really was… and what you really did for us,” His tongue slides slowly out, laps at the tar true demons call blood and smeared it on his lower lip.

“Shut up.”

“The whole bloody thing, Dean… The reason Lilith wanted you there in the first place—“

The salt works. Shuts him up real quick. Or at least gags him for the time being, sends the demon into spasms and all his arms seize and flail and claw at the air. Dean thinks this might be the first time he’s ever seen Alastair at anything other than full mast and it feels kind of good that he can be a demonic boner kill.

Alastair chokes up the salt and the holy water and what looks like part of his cancer patient meat suit’s lungs and shakes his heads back and forth as if to clear his thoughts. “You know… it was supposed to be your father. He was supposed to bring it on. But, in the end… it was you.”

“Bring what on?” He says it absently, just talking so he doesn’t have to think.

“Oh, every night, the same offer, remember? Same as your father… And finally you said ‘Sign me up’,” He shivers in sick delight, “Oh, the first time you picked up my razor… the first time you sliced into that weeping bitch—“

Dean can still see her in his head. Naked and pale and shivering with eyes wide and panic filled and LOST, BEGGING— _“Please—please, no—please, don’t.”_

“—That was the first seal.”

It shakes through him and he forces down the flood of bile in his throat, weaves his way closer brandishing the knife and tilts his head with a smile; “You’re lying.”

Alastair blinks and leans in as well, breath hot and wet and smelling like brimstone; “’And it is written that the first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in hell. As he breaks… so shall IT break.’”

He watches him. Measures the twitches of his faces, the evenness of his voice. He steps back, stares into the corner and focuses on his breath, swallows rapidly to keep down the meager contents of his stomach, naught but whiskey now that sloshes and burns like acid all the way into his sinuses.

 “We had to break the first seal before any of the others. Only way to get the dominoes to fall, right? Topple the one at the front of the line.”

He can’t breathe, his ears are ringing—He pulls at the collar of his shirt, pushes OUT with all that weird bottled up energy he’d found locked away down there but nothing works. Alastair won’t shut up. Dean’s brain won’t shut up, flashing a horrific slideshow of broken bodies and mangled souls begging him to stop—pleasefortheloveofgodstopithurts— the Witnesses, Samhain, all the others he doesn’t know about—ALL OF IT—

“When we win… When we bring on the apocalypse and burn this Earth down. We’ll owe it all to you, Dean Winchester.”

He can’t smell anything but brimstone and blood and feces and disease, is covered in it head to toe. Inside and out… There is nothing clean. Nothing.

“Believe me, son. I wouldn’t lie about this. It’s kind of a… religious sort of thing with me, yanno? Some people’s got their Jesus, or their ‘God’… Me? I’ve got my salvation written in the blood of millions.”

Dean’s voice is gone. His lips form the words, whisper them into dead air. “No… I don’t think you are lying. But, even if the demons do win… you won’t be there to see it—“

Alastair is smiling, broad and bloody with both his faces and he gestures upward with a gentle nod of his head; “You should talk to your plumber about the pipes—“

There’s something unique about a demon’s hands. They can look delicate and small and be tipped with fine catlike claws, but they can bend steel, rend flesh from bone and pull teeth from your skull with the pressure of two fingertips. They can strip you down to nothing, to atoms… and rebuild you only to repeat the slow process of destruction all over again.

Dean has been out of hell for an exact total of four months and one day. Less time than he spent Downstairs by thirteen days and six hours. In that time he’s slept perhaps a total of ninety-two hours. And spent three years of it dreaming of this. Of being back on the rack under Alastair’s knives and his twisted, ever shifting body.

Strangely, it’s a relief. The anticipation was worse than anything… The waiting for the blow to fall. Now that they’re here Dean finds it’s easier to deal with. Unlike in Hell, he can sink back and separate himself now. He lets himself go limp and be used to the demon’s will like he did There, but the rigid rules to reality here allow him to slip away into his head and as much as Alastair wants to change his outward appearance to match the tortures he’s brewing in his mind, he’s stuck with the mutilated cancer patient. Dean only belatedly realizes that the poor guy’s soul wasn’t still between Alastair’s teeth when he’d entered this room, so at least he’s been spared that, maybe the rest will be OK.

It starts out with simple punching. Dean’s been knocked around so much he barely notices it, can barely feel the crunch of his nose or the crack of bone from his cheek, or that sharp stabbing pain in his left eye that leaves his vision clouded with a weird green amorphous shape on that side.  It’s when Alastair picks him up by his throat and slams him back against the iron of the rack Castiel had constructed and he starts wrapping chains around Dean’s neck that he realizes the demon is talking to him.

“Did you think you were being brave? Standing up for him like that? Did you think he’d run into your fucking arms like one of those damsels in those movies you pretend to hate? Were you expecting him to be SOOOO grateful that he’d just bend you over the table and take you like the whore you are?” He laughs and there’s a hand pulling at Dean’s pants but he barely feels it, “The only reason I didn’t snap your neck like a dry spaghetti noodle where you stood was because of THIS—“ He presses his free hand flat against Dean’s chest but he can feel the eight attached to his true self clawing and TEARING, trying to find a way in. “Regular iron can’t hurt me, Dean… Not even your pathetic human consecration can pack a wallop like That can… It takes Grace, dipshit. It takes Consecration by _Grace_ and somehow—someway, YOU got your dirty little mitts on it and figured out how to use it…”

There is pain, sudden dry tearing pain from below but he’s only vaguely aware of it. Dean can feel his heart beating in his eyes, he can’t see anything anymore, the pressure of that chain around his neck is too great  and even as he paws weakly trying to defend himself he’s about as effective at knocking Alastair’s hands away as he is at drawing in air at the moment.

“Now honestly, when you came in here I was worried—Truly, I was… I figured you’d have realized it by now, but you didn’t—You never were very bright, were you. Even Daddy said so, figured if he couldn’t have two smart sons he’d at least have one genius and a good little soldier. Funny how all he ended up with was you and Hell Boy.”

Everything was fading, deep and numb and he couldn’t exactly feel his left side anymore, nothing responded when he screamed at it to move and something wet is running down his leg—hopes it isn’t blood, hopes Alastair didn’t pick up a knife off the cart and start cutting— but it doesn’t compute. Nothing does. He’s just a desperate scrap of consciousness suspended over a Demon with nine arms and two faces—

“You’ve got a lot to learn, boy… so, I’ll see you back in class bright and early, Monday morning!”

The chain around his neck burns hot and POPS. Alastair makes a choked roaring noise and jerks backward staring at a blackening, smoking burn across his palm.

For Dean everything is fading black. There are snatches of color and sound and sensation, but nothing is solid, nothing is real.

He‘s on the ground. Sees Cas, dressed for work and wielding a knife. His glasses are gone—where’d he put them? He has astigmatism, doesn’t like wearing his contacts. Poor guy’s gonna be late if Dean doesn’t help him find them.

There’s a monster with a knife in his chest. He’s very well animated, Dean can almost smell the gory disgusting filth of him.  The world becomes very bright suddenly and his eyes hurt—everything hurts. He tastes vomit and blood and can feel himself shaking all over—too hard—his muscles SCREAM from sudden unforgiving-unrelenting tension, his joints pop and his back arches forward. Something’s gagging—wheezing—gagging some more. It sounds like an engine sucking water… then there’s nothing.

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	15. Abiit Nemine Salutato

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully another update by monday.

0-0-0

They’d shaved part of his head. The left side where he’d struck the grave stone in Greybull. They’d pared the hair down to the pale slick of Dean’s scalp and cut him open. Drilled a hole in his head like they were going after oil.

Subdural Hematoma, partially crushed trachea and larynx, fractured vertebrae, seizures… oxygen deprivation… brain damage. Possible stroke… coma.

But Dean’s heart was still beating, even if he couldn’t breathe, even if they’d had to cut away part of his skull and scoop out a blood clot the size of a tangerine. Even if he wasn’t displaying reflexes in any of his limbs and the doctor had suggested a radical experimental treatment to reduce the swelling of Dean’s brain and spinal cord and his brother was effectively hypothermic so he retained a sliver of a chance of maybe one day walking again or at least being able to look at Sam and smile— Dean was alive… that’s all that mattered, right?

Right?

Sam rubbed his face with shaking hands and just—just stared. Twenty-four hours ago he’d been telling Dean to shut up and eat his sandwich. Twenty-four hours ago he’d been telling Dean to stop pouting that they’d made it out of Greybull alive and yeah, Pamela may hate them now because of all the angel demon bullshit, but at least she wasn’t dead.

_“Just stop it, OK? We get to the hotel you can take your fuckin’ happy pills and tomorrow we can get to work on this lead Ruby found for us.”_

_“Happy pills… Yeah right.”_

The IV pump was counting down its last seconds. He could see the digital display from his seat by the bed. A nurse came in with a new bag, gave him a professional nod and set to work changing the empty for a new one.

Sam watched her, sent out preverbal feelers and checked her for signs of possession. She gave him a funny look, but was ‘Normal’.

Dean didn’t so much as twitch.

Sam followed the nurse with his eyes and just as she disappeared around the corner another face appeared. Familiar, whole and blood free.

Castiel was staring in at them. His lips were compressed and there was a gray tint to his skin.

Sam exhaled and pushed himself to his feet, stepped into the hall but didn’t go farther than that. He couldn’t. Physically could not, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder violently, “Get in there and heal him… Miracle. NOW.”

Castiel spoke firmly; “I can’t.”

“You and Uriel put him in there—“

“No—“

“—Because you can’t keep a simple devil’s trap together!”

“I don’t know what happened. That trap—“ His breath hitches and he steps back, breathes in and out, focuses on himself not that juddering unnatural feeling in his chest. Not the DOUBT Anna had spoken of. “It shouldn’t have broken. I am sorry.”

Sam shakes his head, “This whole thing was POINTLESS, you understand that, right? The demons aren’t doing the hits. Something else is killing your soldiers.”

“Perhaps Alastair was lying—“

“No,” Sam meets his eyes and grinds his teeth; “He wasn’t… “ He chokes, takes a moment to force his voice down and lifts a hand between them; “I really—I really just can’t even look at you right now… I can’t.”

“Sam, if I could—“

“Then do it! Stop with all this ‘woulddacoulddashouldda’ bullshit and DO something. Nobody’s stopping you!”

“I cannot disobey my orders—“

“Right, yeah…” He swallows uses his six inches of greater height and towers over the angel; “Yanno, they don’t know if Dean’s going to wake up… forget walking or talking or THINKING. He might NEVER wake up and the last thing he saw—the last thing he felt was that—that DEMON _o-on him_ after he thought he was safe…” He swallowed a lump in his throat; “He was getting better, Castiel. He actually smiled at me the other day… and now I don’t know if he’s going to ever breathe on his own again.”

“Sam—“

His hand came up again and Castiel could feel the power in it, the unholy BURN of it beneath the younger Winchester’s skin; “If you’re not going to heal him then go before I do something we’ll both regret,” He compresses his lips and lets out a little POP noise then turns and disappears back into Dean’s room.

0-0-0

He finds Uriel in the same place he usually finds him. Sitting in the sun with the shadows at his back. It’s the same greeting, a formal acknowledgment of his name, wings displayed in acceptance of his presence. Simple, normal. Familiar.

“I received revelation from our superiors,” He shakes his head, “Our brothers and sisters are dying and they—they want us to stop hunting the demon responsible.”

Castiel sits and regards the world around him. How Man has remade it, unshaped and reformed the purity of the landscape and made something new and aesthetically pleasing. Places for their children to play and run and climb and jump. Concrete paths to walk on so the dirt doesn’t sully their shoes…

“Something is wrong up there,” Uriel looks upward and to the right when he says it. “I mean, can you feel it?”

Castiel presses all of his hands together; “The murders, maybe they aren’t demonic.”

Uriel makes a little shuffling noise beside him, uncomfortable, but Castiel continues.

“Sam Winchester said the demons had nothing to do with it.”

“If not the demons, who could it be?” He’s drawn himself up defensively.

“The will of heaven… We are failing, Uriel. We are losing the war. Perhaps the garrison is being punished.”

“You think our Father would—

“I think maybe our Father isn’t giving the orders anymore,” He feels himself twitching, the Doubt rising; “Maybe there is something wrong.”

Uriel is gazing upward again, wings mantling back. He stands with all of his hands curled into fists and turns his faces up. “Well I won’t wait to be gutted,” He turns to Castiel and lowers his voice in urgency; “Will you join me? Will you help me fight this, Castiel?”

Castiel stares at his hand then looks away to the East; “I must think.”

Uriel nods once, “Call for me, Castiel. Do not hesitate,” He steps forward like he’s stepping off a cliff. To a human it would appear startling to watch but to Castiel it is perfectly natural. Stepping off the mortal plane into the spiritual one and then into the Heavenly realm. To a human it would look almost like Uriel had fallen halfway into the ground and popped up again like he’d been shot from a cannon, or perhaps like his vessel had tripped and fallen to the ground. Castiel preferred to slip into the spiritual plane before he took flight, it seemed less jarring to the humans who happened to see him. Most specifically, Dean.

Dean…

Castiel pressed his hands together and closed his eyes, let himself melt back just a little, open and receiving but shielding his presence. He Listened and for the first time didn’t take everything he heard from the Host as absolute TRUTH, but listened to the tone color of their voices. Listened to their Intent.

All of it was good Intent… but he didn’t know if it was pure. He couldn’t tell. He didn’t KNOW.

Fear, Anna had called this. Doubt. It felt like _weakness,_ but he had felt the same things before from Dean Winchester and the man had proven to be quite brave. He had stepped through that door and gone against everything that made him who he was to please Heaven—No… no it had had little to do with Heaven. He had gone in there because Castiel had asked him to, had said it was his duty.

The trap should not have broken… it could not have just simply failed. No… Something had happened. He Knew it.

0-0-0

It has started snowing again. Softly, quietly. The hospital parking lot is almost empty, just the staff, a smattering of visitors and the Impala. There are two women on the maternity ward who will give birth tonight. Two boys. It is a Thursday.

Castiel stands outside on the path in front of the building and calls out to a fallen angel. 

She does not respond to her true name… But does to her human one.

“Decided to kill me after all?”

He exhales and presents himself, empty hands and accepting her counsel; “I’m alone.”

She returns the stance. She may consider herself an angelic human, but there are formalities here and Castiel has offered them as if she were not disgraced. It’s only polite to return them. “What do you want from me, Castiel?”

“I’m considering disobedience.”

She nods; “Good.”

“No, it isn’t. For the first time, I feel—“

She steps closer cautiously, hands open, accepting; “It only gets worse.”

“How can it get worse?” He looks away, can feel that chasm in his core—remembers that sharp impossible shock of PAIN when he had felt Dean accept his ‘duty’ and step into that room. That jag of betrayal and incalculable sadness because it felt fundamentally WRONG that he had asked Dean to do this… The sudden spike of panic and the cold retreat into NOTHING when Alastair had left the trap and grabbed him—

“Choosing your own course of action, is confusing. Terrifying because you don’t KNOW if you’re doing the right thing—“ She touches him and he flinches back, takes up a defensive stance. She shakes her head; “Oh… That’s right. You’re too good for my help. I’m just trash—a walking blasphemy,” She turns her back on him and walks away, wings lifting—

“Anna, I— I don’t know what to do. Please, tell me what to do—“

She looks over her shoulder, sadly and shakes her head. “Like the old days, huh? Trade one Boss for a shiny new one; the same ideals, same process, but still hoping for a different outcome. No, I’m sorry, Castiel. It’s time to think for yourself.”

He watches her go and for a while just stares up at the hospital’s façade, the staff’s shift change is coming up soon. There will be a briefing of doctors coming On to overview Dean’s condition, what to expect and how to proceed should complications arise. Three days have passed and they’re watching for infection. His temperature is up. They’re afraid he’s developed pneumonia and started IV antibiotics. He’s scheduled for another CT scan in the morning to look for lesions on his brain, damage from the concussions and swelling.

They’ve had a counselor in to speak with Sam about ‘Long Term Care’ three times now, but Sam won’t listen. He won’t sign the DNR the doctor is suggesting, hasn’t left the hospital any longer than it takes him to drive to the truck stop on the highway and shower, scrape the hair off his face and drive back.

Sam didn’t eat breakfast. He talks to himself and to Dean when nobody is around, promises his brother that he’ll get a pie for his birthday if he wakes up in time. “I don’t care if I have to put it in a blender, if you wake up I’ll make sure you get pie on your birthday.”

Castiel breathes out at the sky. It is cloudy tonight, snow is fluttering down. One of the women is being moved into the surgical suite, her son will arrive in less than twenty minutes via cesarean, the other closer to dawn, the exact time has not been settled by the infant yet.

Castiel follows the tracery patterns of ice crystals on the lip of pipe work on a water fountain at the side of the jogging path. It drips slowly, has for years… There’s a divot at the base of the bowl where over time the water has worn away at the concrete.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

The meat packing plant where he and Uriel had held Alastair captive is barely a heartbeat away.

There is blood still on the floor. It smells stale and is beginning to rot. The puddle of vomit and urine where Dean had fallen into his first seizure is gone but he knows where it was. His eyes are drawn to it. Drawn to the flecks of Dean’s blood dried black against the concrete.

The room reeks of pain and sulfur and death and torture.

Water is still dripping onto the outer ring of the trap, eating away more of the line. There is no divot in the floor. This leak is recent, hasn’t even worn away the thin veneer of sealant the building’s owner had painted on almost twenty years ago.

The control valve twists easily, isn’t broken like the one on the hospital jogging path, this one was deliberately opened and as soon as it’s closed, there are two more drops then nothing more.

Castiel stands there and stares at the spot where Dean had fallen, the demon slaying knife is still caked in Alastair’s blood, cracked and rotting and stinking of sulfur and death.

Uriel appears mid-stride. “You called?”

He inhales and lets it out. “I require your assistance.”

“Oh? With what?”

“Uncovering the truth of this.”

Uriel smiles, “Finally come to your senses? We can fix this, we can right this wrong and end the war, but we must stand strong, together. What do you say, Castiel? Will you join me? Will you fight with me?”

“It’s strange, how a leaky pipe can undo the work of angels. When we ourselves are supposed to be the agents of fate,” He turns and regards Uriel with his wings folded close and his hands pressed tight to his body.

The welcoming arch of Uriel’s wings pulls carefully inward, wary of the lack in acceptance of his presence. “Alastair was much more powerful than we had imagined—“

“No. No demon can overpower that trap… I made it myself.”

Uriel’s hands close and his wings fold in.

It’s not much of a discussion. Castiel has known something was wrong, the trap had not failed, it had been broken, someone had wanted to free Alastair while Dean was in the room. Someone had WANTED harm to befall Dean. Castiel didn’t know why. He had doubted… and now there was no way to make himself believe again. Perhaps, as the human adage goes; ‘Ignorance is Bliss’.

“The only thing that can kill an angel… is another angel.”

“You.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You broke the devil’s trap, set Alastair on Dean.”

“Alastair should never have been taken alive. Really inconvenient, Cas—“

The name burns along his nerves and he flinches back from it.

“Yes, I did turn the screw a little. Alastair should have killed Dean and escaped and you should have gone on happily scapegoating the demons.”

“You would have killed an innocent—“

“Innocent?” Uriel smiles, “There is nothing innocent about Dean Winchester.”

_Yes._ It’s a small voice, more of a FEELING in his core, but it’s new and gentle and Castiel cradles it close to himself. _Yes, he is. You’re just too blinded by ‘righteousness’ to see it._

“You would have me blame demons for the murders of our kin when they have not committed the crimes?”

“Not murders, Castiel. No. My work is conversion. How long have we waited here? How long have we played this game by rules that make no sense?”

“It is our Father’s world, Uriel,” He turns his back on him, a sign of disgrace and disgust.

“Our Father? He stopped being that, if he ever was, the moment he created THEM! Humanity, his favorites. This whining, puking larva.”

Anger flares in his grace and Castiel’s palms turn defensively. “Are you trying to convert me?”

“I wanted you to join me, and I still do! With you, we can be powerful enough to—“

“To?”

“To raise our brother.”

His stance widens and his wings shift low, all four arms out, palms tilted. “Lucifer.”

“You do remember him, right? How strong he was? How beautiful?”

Castiel remembers the vague shape of him, nothing more. Light and Power and burning fierce Righteousness.

“And he didn’t bow to humanity! He was punished for defending us… Now, if you wanna believe something, Cas. Believe in him.”

“Lucifer is not God.”

“God isn’t God anymore… He doesn’t care what we do, I am proof of that!”

“But this? What were you gonna do, Uriel? Were you gonna kill the whole garrison?”

He smiles. “I only killed the ones who said ‘No’.”

Castiel looks down and sees splashes of Dean’s blood between his feet, feels that well of Doubt in his chest begin to shift and change and strengthen.

“Others have joined me, Cas. Now, please, brother. Don’t fight me. Help me… Help me spread the word. Help me bring on the apocalypse and wipe this planet clean of the infection set upon it,” He holds out his arms, open and awaiting acceptance, his blade glints in the lamplight, burns with the flame of his grace. “All you have to do is be unafraid.”

Afraid…

“For the first time in a long time… I am.”

Angels do not fight as humans do. When they inhabit vessels it is not unheard of for them to grapple as humans, but it is not for the same reasons humans have. Angels cling when they fight, grip with all their hands and wings and press IN with their grace. They BURN like suns. Throwing punches and tearing clothing is only to break the Hold, give them time to regroup, to dig deep for more energy. To call out to brothers and sisters for aid.

Castiel has no one to call out to. He uses his vessel to throw Uriel away from him, to think and focus his grace. He punches and throws to weaken his opponent and BURNS when they touch is Burned in return.

His vessel bleeds and he thinks it’s oddly fitting that it splashes to the ground alongside Dean’s. Blood be spilled by Blood he’s drawn.

Uriel has expected this, has drawn his grace forward into a keen blaze, Castiel had not, was relying on his smaller size and greater agility to twist away from the Hold. Was relying on his vessel’s hidden and greater physical strength to keep Uriel’s at bay—

He grips Uriel’s arms and Holds, tries to wrest the blade away with the hands of his vessel but Uriel’s wings bend up and come down with crushing force, knock Castiel’s back and one hand slips free

Castiel bows back with a shocked gasp but the hand slaps over his face and he feels the push BURN into him, sees impossible brightness and—

Uriel blinds him and Castiel lashes out with a cry, kicks with his vessel’s legs and knocks the other angel back. Staggers away with two of his four hands over his face, hunched forward and radiating pain— His vessel’s eyes still work, but the sight he has with them is limited, physical. He cannot see all of Uriel’s hands, or his wings. He sees a large human shape above him holding an angel’s blade. He calls out helplessly, feels his grace reaching out in search of some sort of aid, anything—

Uriel grips his wings but does not burn, the grace in his hands promises that he will, but the hands of his vessel curl and strike. It is base and ugly and completely without honor that Uriel beats him, smiles with his vessel’s face and rains down blows.

Castiel grips back, Holds, but to no avail; “You cannot win, Uriel… Even if you kill me, I will die serving God.”

His vessel’s teeth are red. “You haven’t even met him… You follow so blindly… There is no will. No wrath— No God.”

Castiel sees her human body, doesn’t even recognize her without the burn of her grace in his vision until she is standing at his side and Uriel is dead.

Her hands are cool and he can feel them, but the only ones he can see are those of her vessel, she touches—soothes, whispers into him of his courage, kneels with him in the ruin and presses her lips to his brow.

He will heal, but what Sight he regains is questionable. Dim lighted shapes without detail. The cosmos beyond the length of his arms has lost shape and fallen to blackness. It may return… it may not. He doesn’t Know.

He may never Know again.

0-0-0

Sam is at his side when Dean moves suddenly, without warning, early Thursday morning. His body arches sharply upward, eyes wide and unseeing, pupils blown wide. He chokes and gags and his fingers spasm where they’re tangled in the sheet, reaching for something.

Sam thinks at first from the way the machine monitoring Dean’s brain function and the heart monitor and the respirator begin shrieking that his brother is having another seizure. Sam lunges from his chair, uncaring that his laptop falls to the floor and grabs Dean’s nearest hand—shouts loudly for help.

The doctors have only just come On and four of them come running. The room is crowded and noisy and Sam is pushed back into a corner, winds up standing just inside the bathroom watching with his hands in his hair, fearing that this is it. The doctors wheel Dean out, machines still screaming and Sam stands there until a nurse comes in looking for him ten minutes later.

“He—he’s dead isn’t he—“ Sam is numb inside, burning alive with hopelessness and black rage. The lights in the room flicker and buzz and the nurse has her hands up open, trying to calm him.

“Mr. Davis, your brother is fine… He’s alright.”

Sam’s knees give out.

The nurse catches him around the waist and helps him to his chair.

“They’re running some tests, but they think he’s going to be fine.”

By four that evening Dean is back in his room. They’ve replaced the breathing tube with a cannula and although there is still a feeding tube in his right nostril, leading to his stomach, he is awake. He looks in Sam’s direction when he speaks, listens while Sam talks about how the CT scan showed no new or worsened lesions on his brain, nothing more than bruising which seemed surprisingly minor considering.  He keeps looking to the left of the room. The empty chair by the door like his focus is drawn there and twice Sam asks what he’s seeing, maybe it’s a Reaper or something… But Dean doesn’t speak.

Monday morning a Psychologist comes in, as well as the neurologist and a speech therapist.

Sam isn’t allowed in the room, stands out in the hall leaning against the railing with his arms crossed, watches out the window as a woman is wheeled out to her car with a tiny bundle of new life in her arms.

Dean’s neurologist and the Psychologist pull Sam aside into a little empty waiting room when they come out, tell him about different treatment options, anti-depressants, therapy. They tell him about warning signs, different types of seizures and what needs to be done in the event one occurs, how the hospital deals with ‘special cases’.

“Special cases?”

“Your brother’s eating disorder… When he was brought in he was terribly malnourished… the marks on his fingers and the back of his throat… Have you noticed anything unusual with his eating habits in say, the past three months or so?”

Sam swallows nervously; “He’s been going through some stuff and… No, he’s fine. He doesn’t do that.”

The doctor shows Sam still images caught through one of his scans, points to dark areas amid the white and gray; “Those are peptic ulcers,” More pages, “Ketoacidosis, low blood pressure, low blood sugar. Add those to the damage to your brother’s esophagus and there’s little other alternative… You really haven’t noticed anything unusual?”

Sam stares at the pages, the lists of numbers and symptoms, summaries and diagnosis. “He—he has nightmares. Bad ones… about— About what happened to him, sometimes he won’t eat after—“ He shakes his head, “He never eats after. And sometimes I have to yell at him to get him to eat meat… Jesus,” he puts the pages down and rubs his face. “I’m so stupid… I just—I didn’t want to see it. I wanted him to be OK. I-I was just glad to have him back, yanno? That’s all I cared about, he was alive and he was home and—“

Stable environment, they said. Stress-free. They couldn’t give him anti-depressants until his ‘Nutritional Issues’ were under control. Weekly therapy sessions—Oh, yeah, Dean would love that, blood monitoring and monthly scans to check his brain function, anticonvulsants until they cleared him or made a formal diagnosis. The word hung at the forefront of Sam’s mind like a noose and in his thoughts he could do nothing but curse and rant and throw things because it was the angels’ fault. Dean wouldn’t have been hurt if it wasn’t for them.

Dean is a pale blank shape in the bed when Sam is allowed to return. He’s staring out the window. It’s snowing again. Sam rubs his hands on his legs and takes the chair by his brother’s bed; “I—uh… I owe you a pie, man. Don’t let me forget this time, seriously.”

Dean doesn’t say a word.

Sam stays until his stomach makes an obnoxious rumbling noise and the silence from Dean eats away at his last nerve. He says he’s going to go get something from the vending machine, that he’ll be right back—Waits for a reply but doesn’t get one.

Dean waits until Sam is gone before he looks at the figure in the chair by the door. He’s been there since Dean came back from all those tests. Invisible, like a goddamned grim reaper in a rain coat. Unmoving, silent as the grave.

There’s something off about him, there are empty places in the night-sky color that flames around him when Dean Looks, patches shaped like hands and lightning and wings. Castiel’s face is burned, scarred. Dean can feel an ache in his chest, somewhere behind his lungs.

They haven’t spoken for as long as Dean has been aware of him, but for some reason, that silence breaks now. Dean wishes it hadn’t.

“Are you OK?”

He has no voice, what comes out is papery, like a kazoo or some shit and it hurts. The doctors gave him a book to write on until things healed, but the angel is too far away and his eyes… Dean isn’t sure if he can even see two feet in front of his nose. “No thanks to you.”

“You need to be more careful.”

“You need to learn how to manage a damned devil’s trap,” He swallows, feels like there’s razors in his throat and that tube in his nose shifts—pulls—he wants to be sick but the drugs they’re pumping into him won’t let him.

“That’s not what I mean,” Castiel breathes carefully, tilts his head and stares at his hands. “Uriel is dead.”

“Demons?”

“Disobedience… He’s the one who broke the trap. He was working against us.”

Dean’s hands twitch, find a loose thread in the weave of the blanket covering him and pick at it for lack of anything he can scratch into bleeding.

“So, what… you’re here to take me back to hell?”

“No.”

He coughs, pulls his knees up and winces at pain from below, goes tense and still and feels his heart ratchet up, panic builds behind his sternum like a scream; “’he get me again? I… ‘s my body. Nobody’s got the ri—“

“He did not… he tried but he was stopped.”

Dean shivers, folds his arms over his stomach and turns his face away. “Don’t want anyone touchin’ me like that ever again.”

Castiel looks at him, has to rely on his vessel’s eyes primarily because all he can See of Dean is a muted corona of light, dimmed and thinned to practically non-existent and at its core the piece of himself he’d left behind.

Dean swallows again glances to the right and gropes numbly at the cup of ice-pieces the nurse had been employing against him earlier. His teeth hurt too much to chew them and swallowing anything feels like choking down broken glass, but letting the pieces melt and slide down doesn’t feel too bad.“Cas?”

“Yes, Dean?”

 “Is what Alastair said true? Did… did I start all this?”

“Yes.”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t even seem to breathe.

“When we discovered Lilith’s plan for you, we laid siege to Hell. We fought our way to get to you before you—“

“Jump-started the apocalypse,” He says it like it’s a joke. Like it’s funny but nobody’s laughing.

Castiel leans back in his seat, doesn’t make a sound and focuses on the ceiling. “And we were too late.”

“Then why didn’t you just leave me there?”

Castiel can feel it, hopelessness, self-hatred, overwhelming, crushing GUILT. He feels tight and hot and his vessel’s eyes go blurry, he doesn’t understand it, doesn’t understand why when he had left that part of him behind, it hadn’t separated completely—Why was it slowly poisoning him with emotions angels were not supposed to feel? “It’s not blame that falls on you, Dean. It’s fate,” He breathes in, tries to reign it in once more, tries to crush it down and move on; “The Righteous Man who begins it, is the only one who can finish it… You have to stop it.”

Dean looks at him from his pale bruised face, “Lucifer? The Apocalypse? What—what does that mean?” His voice cracks and his face screws up in agony.

Castiel exhales slowly and pushes to his feet.

“Hey—Don’t—don’t you go disappearin’ on me, you son-of-a-bitch!”

The angel steps closer, stands beside the bed and looks down at him with his head tilted to the side. “I don’t know what it means, Dean.  They don’t tell me much. But I do Know our fate rests with you.”

Dean looks up at him and his lips pull back a little, his eyes water and there is no hope or confidence or really anything but resignation in them. “Then you guys are screwed.”

Castiel’s eyes close and his hands curl on the bed railing.

“I can’t… I—I just can’t. It—“ He doesn’t even finish speaking, just stares up and familiar as the eyes are, the face and clothes and the reverse of that tie—as aching and wanting as it is in his chest, Dean doesn’t see who he wants anymore. Doesn’t have it in him to keep hoping for the impossible. “He was right, you know… I’m not all here. I’m—I’m not strong enough,” He breathes for a moment waits until his throat unclenches so he can continue but Castiel opens his eyes and looks at him and for a moment it looks like maybe the angel WANTS to be what Dean has been searching him for all along and it’s too much. 

It’s just all too much.

He inhales, hears it shake in his chest and turns to look at the window again, the snow is falling thicker now, “I guess I’m not the man either of our fathers wanted me to be,” he wonders where Sam is. “Find someone else.”

“Dean—“

His eyes clamp shut and his hands tangle in the blanket, knees still up like a shield between him and the world; “It’s not me… Go away.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	16. Headlights

It’s snowing.

They’re in South Dakota at least, so Sam counts it as a victory they’ve made it this far.

Sam’s driving at a crawl, the windshield wipers are going at high speed and slush is building on the edges of the glass they can’t reach. The mini-van ahead of them is packed full, Sam can see the head of a large dog in the back glass panting and drooling on someone’s luggage. Going back to college it looks like, maybe moving.

Dean’s wearing a hat, some cheap black thing Sam had got at the gas station because everyone kept staring at the wounds on the side of Dean’s head like he was something to be pitied. Not to mention it covers the shitty haircut Dean gave himself before leaving the hospital. He’s got his cheek leaned against the window, fogging it up with the heat of his skin and breath, he’s drawn little swirls and curlicues in it but now his hands are busy elsewhere. He’s scratching at the skin of his inner arm where one of the IVs was. Dry over washed patches have receded thanks to a week and a half in a hospital where he’s obligated to take care of himself. He has to find something else to scratch at now, Sam thinks he’s managed to find blood on his inner wrist, just under the band of his watch, he catches glimpses of it because the band isn’t exactly tight anymore, gaps up enough for Dean to get his fingernails under it and rake up furrows in his skin. It reminds Sam of road burn or that time he and Jess had fooled around on their new area rug and his knees had been red and scabbed for days.

Dean hasn’t said a word in a week. Not since his birthday. At least not while he’s awake… He’d pretended to sleep for the nurses and doctors, but he’d only really slept maybe a total of six hours in the past four days. As soon as he starts dreaming he jerks awake and reaches for a bottle of Jack that isn’t there anymore. No alcohol while he’s taking the anticonvulsants and no alcohol until his ulcers heal. Says so right in the pamphlet Sam’s got tucked away in his laptop case, he’s practically memorized the damned thing.

No heavy lifting.

No greasy/spicy/rich foods.

No smoking.

No alcohol.

No driving either—Dean was still pissed.

Sam had asked about herbal remedies, said his brother was kind of a naturalist, didn’t like all the chemicals— Didn’t mention that prescriptions could be traced and that he and Dean would be in danger if there wasn’t a natural, easily accessible alternative.  The doctor had suggested Valerian Root, said it might help with the anxiety and depression as well, wouldn’t interfere with the Pharmaceuticals and Dean could take it while dealing with his… His Food Thing.

Sam had shown his brother the bottle when he picked it up. Dean had been sitting in the chair by his hospital bed in sweats, a t-shirt  and that ridiculous neck brace the doctors insisted he wear looking annoyed with the world, staring at the ass ugly purple socks they’d put on him with the white zigzag tread on them. He’d looked up at Sam, looked at the bottle and turned to focus on the corner again, like it fascinated him.

Dean improved quickly, he could walk with little to no problem, could breathe on his own and the notes he scribbled on the yellow steno pad he’d been given were only slightly untidy and Sam could convince himself that was because of the continued pain medication. It seemed the cold treatment he’d been given had worked. The physical therapist, an older woman with short gray hair and a broad smile seemed optimistic. She’d got Dean up and shuffling around the Tuesday after he’d woken up, had laughed a booming strong laugh when Dean had peered at her from the corner of his eye and scribbled quickly on his notepad that she’d given him an atomic wedgie with the walking belt.

Physically, Dean was improving very well. Mentally… Sam wasn’t so sure.

There was a nurse. A busty woman about Dean’s age with brown hair she kept coiled back into a fashionably untidy bun and blue eyes. She’d come in the first three mornings after Dean had woken up to help him bathe and he’d sent her out within five seconds of seeing her. Had sent every nurse that had come in out again and even thrown the pitcher of water from his bedside table at the male nurse they’d resorted to when the rest of the On staff had been rejected.

Sam had offered to help since he was used to offering a steadying arm to and from the bathroom and was slightly relieved when Dean had given him the finger and proceeded to clean himself up with shaking unsteady hands.

Dean didn’t want anybody touching him—even seemed to recoil when the physical therapist had to or when Sam looped an arm under his shoulders for support . He pushed himself and tottered along under his own power refusing any kind of contact. If Sam was being honest with himself, he couldn’t blame him, not after what Dean had been through.

It was a surprise really, that after only ten days in the hospital Dean had been released. Sam thought for sure that the psychologist would want to keep him, but the older man seemed perfectly fine signing the release when Sam suggested ‘moving closer to home’.  That had been this morning and now here they were. Medical file stashed in Sam’s case, pills in a bag on the seat between them, neck brace flopping around somewhere in the floorboard, Dean staring out the window, stuck in the snow.

Sam had thought that maybe getting away from the hospital would loosen his brother’s tongue. So, he’d tried to coax him with sweets. Dean ate them but didn’t say anything. Sam tried a burger for lunch, in spite of the warnings about his stomach. Same reaction. Sam went the opposite direction and plunked a plate of salad down in front of Dean at the Denny’s two hours ago—and Dean ate it. Didn’t say anything.

Sam brought a piece of pecan pie in a Styrofoam box out to the Impala afterward with his heart in his neck. Dean had stared at it for a long time… and hadn’t eaten it.

Sam slipped Dean a little holy water with his medication, Bobby would have been proud. He knew nothing would happen, but he didn’t know what else to do.

Sam tried to fill the silence as best he can while they wait for traffic to move. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, sifts through radio stations and tries to find something that Dean may enjoy.

They ease past a semi-truck overturned in the right hand lane at three miles an hour. There are road flares and policemen with flashlights in heavy long coats with reflective stripes motioning the traffic on. As they’re moving a car going the opposite direction fishtails in the mess on the road and spins out into the median, it comes to a stop with the front end in a culvert and the back up in the air. A few policemen make their way over to help the driver.

Sam takes the next exit and looks for a place to hole up until the storm is over or they shut down the roads. There’s no way they can make it to Bobby’s like this. It’s not safe. 

Dean shifts in his seat, lifts his head away from the glass and swipes his fog-drawings away with his sleeve, watches the little town shift by and rubs gingerly at the back of his neck. Sam gives his shoulder a light smack and points emphatically at the neck brace half hidden in the floorboard.

Dean rolls his eyes but puts it on, hunches his shoulders and slouches in his seat so he can’t see the world outside and by four-year-old reasoning, can’t be seen by it in turn.

It’s a small town. Houses dated, all thirties and forties, most of them for-sale or abandoned.  A few businesses on Main Street are shut down. Empty dusty windows, red and white signs taped up at eye height. One building is gutted, looks like it may have burned down close to twenty years ago and the brick front is the only thing still standing. There’s a gas station with pumps whose numbers flicker past like slot machines when Sam stops to fill up the tank, for some reason he feels like maybe he’s slipped back in time. Bounces on the balls of his feet to stay warm in the wind and knocks heavy wet snowflakes from his hair and sleeves.

The attendant is a middle-aged woman with brown hair lightly peppered with gray. She’s crocheting something where she’s perched on a stool behind the counter and watching reruns of Mork and Mindy.

Sam hears the cowbell above the door clank behind him and he turns to see Dean stomping the slush from his boots. He looks around, left and right and goes to the back of the store, most likely looking for the bathroom.

Sam’s shoulders sag and he moves up and down the aisles picking out snacks, packets of ramen noodle, cans of soup.

Dean comes back, a few minutes later, shuffles up to him and just kind of… just kind of follows him around with his hood pulled up and his eyes averted.  Sam asks in a low voice if he wants anything.

Dean doesn’t say a word.

Sam wants to cry. “It’s been a week, man. I know your throat hurts, but you can talk. Just—just whisper OK?”

He looks away.

Sam sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair; “How long are you going to keep this up? You— you gotta say something sometime. Anything… Hell I’d settle for a ‘shut-up, Sam’ at this point… Just—just say something.”

Dean doesn’t look at him, nudges a can of Vienna Sausages on the shelf in front of him with a look of disgust and goes back to the car.

Sam watches him go, sees Dean swipe his knuckles under his nose and avoid the watchful eye of the attendant as he pushes back out into the snow. He doesn’t even slam the door when he gets in the car. Just shuts it and sits there with a vacant expression on his face.

The next thing Sam knows all his groceries are spilled out around him and he’s crouched down in the middle of the aisle with his elbows on his knees and his hands on the back of his neck, like he’s trying to fold himself up into nothing. He can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t even make a sound because it feels like he’s mourning his brother all over again and the guy’s just right there, outside in the car… But it—he’s not the Dean Sam knows anymore, it’s like there’s nothing of his brother left.

The attendant puts a hand on his back and bends close, asks in a lightly accented voice if he’s OK.

Sam shakes his head, can’t stop shaking it, covers his face because he doesn’t want this stranger to see him like this.

She’s persistent, wraps her little arms around him as best she can and keeps whispering that it’s alright, “It’s alright. Just tell me what’s wrong, what is it?”

He doesn’t tell her the truth, says something awful happened to his brother. That some people had hurt him very-very badly a while back, that it had changed him. Changed both of them and they’d unfortunately run into one of the bastards again a few days ago. Sam says that he’d tried to get him to talk about it, thinking it would help but it had only made things worse and now his brother hasn’t spoken in a week. “He—he’s shut down. It’s like he’s checked out but his body’s still going. An empty shell just eating and breathing and I—I just… I just want my brother back.”

He’s wanted Dean back since the second he’d found out about his deal. Since the instant he’d seen Dean’s body torn and ruined and lifeless. He’d refused to believe Dean was actually gone even while he and Bobby had wrapped his brother’s remains in a sheet, nailed them in a hastily constructed pine box and buried him in a field outside Pontiac.

He’d thought—so happily—that Dean was back, was whole and everything could go back to the way it was before, but he’d been wrong and he didn’t know how to cope with that— Didn’t know how to adapt.

She asks if he’s considered taking his brother to See Someone. That maybe he needs professional help. Sam shakes his head. They can’t risk it. Dean wouldn’t agree anyway, he’d only talked to the one in Cheyenne because he hadn’t had a choice. He’s a stubborn asshole sometimes and besides, there’s not a shrink in the world who wouldn’t medicate you into a coma and lock you up flat out if you went into their office and said; _‘I got mauled to death by hellhounds about nine months ago, spent forty-plus years in hell, was resurrected by an Angel of The Lord, got beaten into a coma by the demon who tortured me in hell and I’m having some Issues with that.’_

“It sounds to me like he needs some help… the kind you can’t really give him, you know? Kind of sounds like you both could use some time off.”

Sam nods, can’t agree, but nods for appearance sake. He picks himself up a few minutes later, gathers his groceries and apologizes for the inconvenience. She shakes her head and gives his elbow an affectionate squeeze, leads him back to the counter and tallies up his purchases, directs him to the nearest hotel. A little motor court about a quarter mile further down the road. “Home Suite Home, you won’t be able to miss it.”

No, Sam isn’t able to miss it.

The building is three sided, shaped like a vaguely angular ‘C’  and painted a ghastly yellow and olive green. There’s still an old aluminum Christmas tree set up in the lobby decorated with beer cans cut into stars. The parking lot hasn’t been touched with a shovel or a plow and there is only one car there, looks like it’s been there a while because the snow on top is pretty deep and there are no tire tracks. Sam pulls to a stop in front of the lobby and rubs his palms over his face before he goes in.

The man behind the counter is elderly, has no teeth and only a horseshoe of hair on his head. He doesn’t smile when Sam approaches, asks the rates and checks the weather report playing on the TV hanging on the wall above the counter.

Looks like more snow until the end of the week. Crap.

The old man bustles about at a surprisingly fast pace for someone his age. Fifty bucks a night, Three-hundred-twenty-five a week.

Sam nods and motions over his shoulder at the parking lot, asks about the snow.

The old man bares his gums says he’s seventy-nine-years-old, you try shoveling a whole fucking parking lot at that age.

Sam blinks at him in surprise of the language and looks away.

Dean has sketched out what looks like a dinosaur with too many arms on the fogged up window when Sam returns to the car, is working on a volcano and seems only mildly interested when Sam backs the Impala into the spot in front of room nine.

As soon as the light clicks on Sam feels weirdly slimy under his skin. It looks like something out of an amateur porn. And not good amateur porn either. Cliché, ugly, amateur seventies-porn. The wallpaper is green flocked. The carpet is the same green as the walls and all the furniture is white and reminds him of space ships with the long thin steel legs and wide short surfaces. Sam feels like he’s stepped into Club Fifty-Four.

The light makes Dean look too pale, almost corpse like, but he shuffles in after Sam and drops his bag on his bed then stands there staring at the cigarette burns on the comforters.

Sam breathes slowly, scrubs at his eyes and shuffles over to his own bed, looks in the side table drawer and finds a local phone book. Nearest restaurant is the next town over unless you’re into ‘Authentic French Cousine’ Sam blinks, can’t believe they spelled it wrong and puts the book back in the drawer. His hands are itching. He—he can’t sit still, needs something to do.

He pulls the desk closer to the phone jack sets out his laptop and plugs the phone cord into his computer—prays someone in the area has dialup and starts punching in random phone numbers—finds one that connects and lets out a breath of relief. It’s slow as hell, but it’s something.

Dean takes his hat off, kicks his shoes off and steps into the bathroom to inspect his hair. He comes back out and goes for the scissors in the med kit and leans over the sink. He exits a while later looking like a proper marine, Sam thinks Dad would have been proud… Then again, probably not.

Dean turns on the TV, pulls the Velcro back on his neck brace and tosses it toward his bed.

“You’re supposed to wear that thing for a reason, you know. Your neck’s broken.”

Dean gives him a look, a frowny ‘please-shut-up’ look.

“You know what I mean. You’ve got a fractured vertebrae, if you move wrong it could break and you’d be paralyzed from the neck down.”

Dean finds Wheel of Fortune and pretends to watch it, starts picking at the pink line of scar tissue on the bridge of his nose.

Sam shakes his head; “Whatever.”

Jeopardy comes on next and Dean changes the channel finds Gilligan’s Island and rolls his eyes dramatically as he keeps surfing.

“I thought you liked Gilligan’s Island?”

A snort.

Sam pushes back from the table. “If you don’t want to talk, fine,” He pulls his coat back on and leaves the room, goes to the lobby and asks the old man if he has a shovel.

Dean comes outside about an hour later with the brace back on, hat on his head again because he’s not used to having hair so short in the winter. Dad had always made it a point not to cut their hair after September growing up unless one of them managed to get hurt or someone found The Bugs. Dad had had a phobia of head lice, had ranted and raved and shaved heads without mercy when it was even mentioned.

Sam watched him approach and shook snow from his hair, knocked the freezing wetness from his eyes. “What is it?”

He didn’t expect an answer, not after seven days of silence… but he still asked.

Dean nudged a clump of snow with his boot.

“I can’t hear your thoughts, Dean.”

He coughed into his fist, looked up at the snow through the light of the streetlamp and snuffed loudly.

“Look, if you wanna talk, just talk, alright? But I’m not coming back in until this is finished… I’ve—I’ve gotta do something or I’m gonna go crazy. You win, OK? Whatever this whole silent treatment was about, you win. I’m sorry, can we just—”

Dean shifts on his feet and shakes his head, “You should leave.”

He’s so happy to hear Dean’s voice, strained and scratchy as it is, that he doesn’t even hear what it is he’s said. “What?”

He swallows, looks at the field across the road where there appears to have, at one time or another, been a house or something; “You should leave me.”

Sam drops the shovel and steps toward him, crosses his arms over his chest and shoves his hands into his pockets to warm; “Why would I leave you?”

“I’m only holding you back—“

His head drops back on his neck; “Dean—“

“No… No, it’s me. I-I need you to leave me… Lock me up in some nut house or just—yeah, just leave me here, I’ll be fine.”

Sam shakes his head; “I’m not leaving you.”

“You should…”

“What would justify me abandoning you, Dean? What happened?”

His mouth opens and closes.

“Why do you want me to leave you?”

His voice comes out even thinner than before; “Because I started it… The whole Main Event… All of it made possible by yours truly.”

Sam shakes his head; “What are you talking about?”

He bares his teeth like it’s painful to even say it; “I was the first seal, Sam.”

Sam blinks, shakes his head and blinks again in shock.

He clears his throat, “So… yeah, you should leave me. Get as far from me as fucking possible.”

Sam lets out his breath and shakes his head. “No.”

“Sam—“

He lifts his eyebrows and holds up his hand fingers spread, palm facing downward; “You’re my brother… I—I don’t care, alright? We’ll find a way to fix this TOGETHER…” He breathes out and squares his shoulders commandingly; “I’m not leaving you and that’s that.”

Dean lapses into silence once more, stands there with his arms crossed and water on his cheeks.

Sam exhales noisily, “You gonna give me a hand or are you just gonna stand there?”

“’m not supposed to ‘strain myself’, remember? My neck’s broken.”

“If that’s the case then you should go back inside and go to bed,” When he looks up again Dean’s mouth isn’t as tense and his shoulders are a little more relaxed. “How’s your stomach?”

He shrugs, kicks a clump of snow.

Sam nods, breathes out; “Bobby called, said if the storm gets too bad he’ll wire some cash for a few more nights.”

Nothing.

Sam keeps shoveling.

By ten He’s got the sidewalk cleared and most of the snow in the parking lot pushed into the middle around the rusting archway that displays the hotel’s neon. It looks like a miniature glacier and part of Sam wants to shove his brother into it and jump on top of him or pelt him with snow balls, but Dean’s just kind of standing there bumping a chunk of ice that fell from the gutter back and forth in a little circle with his foot and there’s snow on his shoulders and hat. 

Christ he looks like a kid or something.

Sam lets out a put-upon sigh and leans the shovel against the wall outside the lobby. “You could have gone back in you know.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you?”

He shrugs.

Sam shakes his head and bumps Dean’s shoulder with his own as he passes.

The room is warm. The furniture may be outdated but the heating seems in top shape. Sam turns it up to tropical and strips down to his boxers and t-shirt. Warms up some soup and shoves a bowl into Dean’s hands.

Dean has a nightmare. Sam wakes up to the sound of thrashing and is on his feet before he realizes Dean isn’t having a fit. It’s relatively easy to wake him; a hand on his knee and a few repetitions of his name.

He doesn’t talk about it, keeps his lips sealed and scratches at the scar on his shoulder until there’s blood under his nails.

They check out early, are on the road before nine thirty and moving slowly east.

It’s a long drive, the roads get worse the closer to Sioux Falls they get, Sam watches semi-trucks pass them with his jaw clenched nervously. Catches Dean gripping his knees and staring straight ahead like he can FEEL how close they get.

Bobby’s waiting when they get there. Sam thinks he looks oddly like Santa Claus. He lets his beard grow a little thicker in the winter for warmth and he’s got a hat with earflaps on. He mumbles a greeting as they climb the steps and shoves a package into each of their hands as they step inside, growls ‘Merry Christmas’ and pushes them in to get the doors shut. “Don’t track mud all over.”

There’s a fire in the hearth and Bobby’s moved his desk to one side of the room, taped plastic sheeting up over the windows and stuffed rags under the doors of the rooms he doesn’t use. It’s warm and somehow comfortable in the cramped space. Dean leans against the kitchen counter and starts pulling at the tape on his parcel when Bobby turns back from the fridge, passes them their customary drinks—Sam’s a beer, Dean’s a holy-water-diluted soda.

Dean glares at him hatefully.

“Get that hat offa yer head and let me see how bad it is,” He presses on Dean’s shoulder, purposefully stays away from the neck brace and picks at the gauze taped over the incisions so he can properly survey the damage. Wrinkles his nose at the green and yellow of healing bruises and peers in through the opening in the brace under Dean’s chin to get a look at the ring of bruised flesh around his throat. He lifts his eyes to Sam and says; “What kinda prognosis we got?”

Sam makes a hollow noise in his throat; “Uh—fractured vertebrae, he’s supposed to wear that thing all the time for the next few weeks but he doesn’t… Anticonvulsants at least until April with scans every three weeks…” He can feel Dean’s eyes on him, gaze damning but Sam continues. He’s not going to lie to Bobby about this, not going to let Dean off easy because this is his brother’s health , his LIFE and one way or another, they are going to get through this—“He has peptic ulcers, ketoacidosis—low blood sugar and low blood pressure—although those last three have improved since he had to eat three times a day and couldn’t make himself sick… The doctor won’t give him anti-depressants until he gets this eating disorder under control.”

“Eating disorder?” Bobby’s nose wrinkles up and he gives Dean a disappointed look.

Dean’s glare is cold and entirely unapologetic. Seems angry truthfully.

Sam starts ticking things off on his fingers; “No alcohol, no driving, no heavy lifting, no ‘undue stress’, no spicy, rich or greasy foods, no caffeine–uhm—“

“I’m standin’ right here, you know,” Dean looks at him with his face contorted.

“Barely,” Bobby pulls at his t-shirt. He huffs out a breath and meets Dean’s eyes evenly; “You got a good excuse for all this?”

Dean’s nose wrinkles up; “Oh, I don’t know… Gettin’ tortured in hell a good enough reason?”

Bobby flinches and casts a shocked look to Sam.

“Dean, son—“

“Don’t… Just—just don’t,” He turns and shuffles into the den once more, eases onto the couch with his arms crossed and his knees pressed together.

0-0-0

Dean doesn’t want to sleep, but the pills make him so… so tired. He hates them. Sam’s already in bed by the time Dean stumbles from the bathroom. His vision’s blurry and he feels like he hasn’t slept in a month.

Bobby’s set up beds for them; shaky, lumpy twins that smell kind of musty and a little like mouse urine. The wind rattles the plastic sheeting over the window every so often and Dean keeps expecting to look over and see an angel standing there. It’s unnerving.

He starts talking, can’t stop himself. Just speaks because there’s too much going on in his head and he’s too tired to get up and find things to take apart or organize. “Sam?”

“Hmmm?” Sam’s lying there on his stomach with his arms tucked up under his pillow. There’s a sawed off by his other side and an extra bag of salt to reinforce the line Dean insisted go all the way around the room.

“Sam… there—there’s somethin’ wrong with me.”

Sam pushes himself up quickly, instantly alert; “You want me to call Bobby?” He rolls into a sitting position and reaches across the space between them; “Doctor said you have to be on your side—“

Dean shakes his head and swats at his hands, “No… Not that. I’m—I’m messed up,” He tries to smile and can’t. “I mean… I am royally—ROYALLY fucked up, Sam.”

Sam relaxes a little, rubs a hand over his face and his voice lowers; “Dean, you’re not fucked up… Some bad things happened to you, yeah. But you’ll get through this—WE’LL get through this. You’re gonna be OK.”

His mouth opens and his teeth appear like he’s going to bite the words because they offend him; “I… I’ve got something IN me.”

“What do you mean?”

He gestures in a circular motion to his chest but can’t say it.

“There’s nothing ‘IN’ you, Dean.”

He finally meets Sam’s eyes and there’s fear in them. “Back in Union… In the barn? When I knocked Alastair’s face in?”

Sam nodded.

“I shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

Sam looks so tired again, his eyes are barely open; “It was iron, Dean… Iron’s like—“

“Not to him… Didn’t you see how he was handling that scythe?”

Sam swallowed nervously.

“Regular iron won’t hurt a white-eyes.”

Sam rubs his face, his eyes have fallen shut once more; “Consecrated iron—“

“Not the kind we’re used to… and what farmer has his pry-bar consecrated, huh?”

Sam shook his head and blinked rapidly to keep himself awake; “What’re you saying, Dean?”

He swallows, breathes in shakily, can barely see him in the darkness. Just a shape painted blue from the moonlight reflecting off snow and the aura of flickering light around him; “I can see your soul, Sam.”

He’s quiet for a three count, digesting it. “What?”

He can feel water running from his eyes into his ears. He whispers it, like saying it any louder may bring down some kind of God shaped hammer and kill them both; “It started just after I came back… kinda—kinda like out of the corner of my eye, yanno? Like when you’ve been in the sun too long... Then I started noticing things. When demons change their eyes I could—could feel them IN there… Could feel what they looked like,” He wets his lips nervously; “Then it wasn’t so much I was ‘feeling’ it as actually seeing them… Kind of like a haze, yanno?” His throat clicks when he swallows; “Then after Greybull… it—it just didn’t go away.”

Sam’s eyes are wide and his mouth is hanging open a little bit. “How’d this happen?”

“I can’t remember… Something happened when Castiel was putting me back in my body. I know that much, but WHAT it was, I don’t know.”

“Maybe you really did get groped by an angel.”

Dean stares at him, all wide scared eyes and pale cheeks in the dark.

Sam looks down at his lap and twists his fingers together; “Sorry.”

Dean is shaking, like the blankets he’s piled on himself aren’t enough and he’s slowly turning to ice inside; “I don’t know what to do.”

Sam shrugs, scratches behind his ear; “Nothing you really can do, is there?”

Dean turns his head and stares up at the ceiling, fingers tangled in the sheet, jaw clenched. “I think I get it now… What you were trying to explain to me a while back.”

Sam purses his lips and watches Dean’s face, the bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallows convulsively.

“How do you do it, Sam? How do you handle knowing there’s something in you that shouldn’t be there?”

He breathes out slowly; “I don’t know… Sometimes—sometimes I just feel like a freak, yanno? Like the only thing that’s separating me from what we hunt is the fact that you trust me.”

Dean isn’t looking at him, isn’t even really moving; “I don’t know if I can trust this… I don’t know if you should trust me with it.”

Sam swallows a lump in his throat; “Well… what can you do? I mean—what does this _whatever_ let you do?”

“I told you—“

“So you’re not having any weird cravings or urges?”

“I could really go for a beer right about now, but other than that—“

“Maybe you’re just seeing things, Dean. I mean—you’ve been through a metric shit-ton of Bad. Nobody’s expecting you to come through it without some kind of issue… Maybe you just need a break.”

“It’s not in my head, Sammy… This is real—He… Alastair—the only type of iron that can hurt a white-eyes is iron consecrated by grace… And _I_ did that. You saw Castiel hit him. Didn’t even mess up his hair, but I picked up that bar, Sam and I _felt it_. It got hot—real hot… Like it was on fire but it didn’t burn me,” His hands are shaking, “I picked it up and I caved Alastair’s face in with one swing.”

Sam exhaled; “Okay… so—so you can Hulk Out… That—that’s pretty awesome actually.”

“I don’t know what this… this _grace_ thing is—“

“Well, considering you used it to _consecrate_ something—I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume it’s a good thing.”

“I’m scared, Sam.”

His breath hitches; “I know, Dean… But maybe it’s not a bad thing.”

Dean stares at him; “How can you just accept it like that?”

“Because,” He flops back onto his pillow and pulls his blankets back up, “I trust you.”

Dean stares at him for a long while, then turns and watches the plastic over the window flutter, his eyes won’t stay open, no matter how hard he tries. His limbs are heavy.

 “Dean?”

He grunts but doesn’t open his eyes.

“W—what’s it look like?”

He cracks one eye open and peers out exhaustedly; “What’s what look like?”

Sam smiles, chooses his words carefully, his lips twitch; “My soul, Dean… What’s it look like?”

It’s dark now, his eye must have fallen shut, “Red.”

“Red? Red… is that—is that bad?”

“Not really,” Breathing feels nice, in and out, slow, even, “Prob’ly not even r’ly red. Tha’s just how my… my head translates it.”

“You can do this to everyone?”

He nods, “Pretty much… Can I go to sleep now?”

“What about Bobby? Tell me that and you can go to sleep.”

“Like a new penny.”

Sam chuckles quietly; “And you can see demons?”

“You said I could sleep—“

“Just one more. You see demons like black smoke hanging around—“

“No… I SEE them. How they really look.”

“Jesus… What do they—“

“No,” His voice shakes and he rolls his head on the pillow, “Sam, please, don’t ask that.”

He sighs, bites his lip and tries again. “What about the angels?”

He makes a pathetic noise and rubs his face, tries to stay awake. “Goddam pills…” He smacks lightly at his cheeks and growls low in his throat, “Not angels—there’s just this LIGHT of ‘em an—and their arms.”

“Their arms?”

“There’s four of ‘em.”

“FOUR!”

“Yeah… Definitely ranks up there on the Weird-o-Meter,” He whines again, works his feet restlessly under the blankets, anything—ANYTHING as long as he doesn’t have to sleep. “Sam.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t let me go to sleep.”

“You were just…” He sighs and sits up—when did he lie back down? “You NEED to sleep, Dean.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“He’ll get me… D-don’t let him get me.”

Sam says something his tone is sad and he pushes a hand over Dean’s brow, carefully lifts his head long enough to tug that hat Bobby had made for him over his head and pull at the blankets. Dean fades out by inches. Sight gone, hearing gone. He’s warm but his skin is covered in chill bumps, his teeth are chattering and the world around him is already starting to take sinister shape.

He can’t move.

Can’t escape it.

He’s so tired… why won’t this just end? Why won’t any of it end?

Please… Please, can it be over now?

Lights through smoke.

BURNING strange shapes with CLAWS.

Screams.

He fights them—even though he is eviscerated, hollowed out and his left leg has been carved down to the bone, nerve tissue pulled out like shoestrings, veins a black sticky cobweb from the ruin of his abdomen and groin to his knees.

He’s not finished. That’s what HE had said. There are still parts of him that haven’t been touched yet— But then those THINGS are there—EVERYWHERE. A dozen or more. He only has one eye, the other went the way of his genitals this morning.

Then something grabs—YANKS him free, like a knife from a wound. There is no way to describe it. He is shocked, terrified, angry, joyful and in the same moment in such acute AGONY he can do nothing but grip back and SCREAM because he doesn’t understand. This is so far removed from what he knows that he shuts down, ceases to be anything but that bitter fiery PAIN.

He bit and scratched and fought because he is a wild thing now. He roared his terrible roar and gnashed his terrible teeth.

Dean hung there, suspended in warm PRESSURE and wept. He clutched at whatever this _thing_ was and felt held in return—felt PROTECTED—and he couldn’t handle it. Wept all the harder because he didn’t know what kindness was anymore, but the arms around him felt warm and strong in a way he hadn’t been in close to forty years.

There were Voices. Loud like the first crashes of thunder in the spring. Forks of lightning that froze and moved with a foreign purpose. There was LIGHT—so bright it leeched the color from everything.

Strange insistent COLD hands—

_No—_

_NO!NONONONONO! CASTIEL! CASONLYCAS! NONONO-NEVERNEVERNEVER! CASCASCASCASCASHELP! CASCASCASKEEPCOLDHANDSGONEAWAYNEVERNEVERNEVER! PLEASEPLEASEPLEASECAS! ONLYCAS!_

The cold hands pulled back in shock and there was warmth again.

Safety, sensation—heavysolidity—skin—

_NONONONONO! ROTTINGBAD! BLOODPAIN! **HELL!** FIREBURNINGPAINTEETH! CHEWINGALWAYSCHEWING! EVERYTHINGHURTS! ITHURTSITHURTSITHURTSSTOPIT! OHGODSTOPITHURTS! NOCASNO! DON’TLEAVEMEALONE! **PLEASE!**_

A hand on his shoulder— strange words— blinding white and everything stops—Shudders—

FREEZES.

**_“HELP!”_ **

Brightness, a strange taste in the back of his throat a deep ACHE in his muscles and joints, hot sharp radiating pain up the back of his neck and into his head like an icepick.

Sam is too close, bending over him with wide eyes and sweat on his brow—no, his hair’s wet. He’s not wearing a shirt—Shower. Oh, Jesus, please don’t let him be naked.

Dean’s breath comes in harsh gasps, quick and tearing and his throat is trying to close off.

Sam turns his head and screams again; “BOBBY, I NEED HELP GODDAMNIT!”

He appears only a few seconds later still wearing his apron. Mutters ‘shit’ under his breath and moves to the other side of the bed, starts clawing at the blankets Dean’s managed to tangle around himself—around his own neck.

No wonder he can’t breathe.

“Is this It?” Bobby’s voice is low, a growl between his teeth; “Is he—“

“I don’t know!” Sam’s tongue flashes over his lips and he’s got one hand on Dean’s chest the other on his back, body pressed up close to keep his brother from thrashing right off the bed. “He’s not posturing anymore—it looked different at the hospital—I don’t know what this is.”

Sam paws at him, gets the blankets from around him, pushes them toward the foot of the bed. “Dean? Dean, if you can hear me just focus on breathing. It’s OK, you’re gonna be OK!”

Dean doesn’t know what’s going on, why his brother and Bobby are manhandling him, or why the aura of color around them is flaring so bright and wide—reaching for him.

He didn’t even realize he was growling through his teeth and fighting them tooth and nail. Not until Sam muttered ‘FUCK’ under his breath and let him go turned and started tearing through his discarded jeans for his phone. Dean only realized it then because without Sam touching him—without anyone touching him, his body instinctively curled in on itself and went still.

Sam stared, Bobby stared. Nobody moved a muscle.

Dean unclenched his teeth. Breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. Repeat.

Bobby leaned over him a little—didn’t touch; “Dean, you alright?”

He didn’t know, continued breathing, glared at Sam; “Don’t—don’t… Never… Not ever!” It doesn’t make any sense, that isn’t what he’d intended to say. What’s going on?

Sam still has his phone in his hand, shifts forward cautiously and strokes his palm back over Dean’s head, looks somehow relieved and worried in the same moment; “It’s alright, just  try to relax, you’ll feel better in a few minutes.”

He opens his mouth again but all that comes out is garbled words that don’t fit together, like a puzzle some kid has mashed with his hand until the pieces are all bent and distorted around one another and the picture is indecipherable. He grinds his teeth and focuses everything he’s got on shaping his mouth around words; “Happened… Shit—what happened?”

Sam nods, breathes in and out and pushes his wet hair out of his face; “You forgot your medicine last night, that’s what happened.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, OH… Jesus Christ,” Sam pushes up to his feet, is wearing nothing but his boxers and they’re soaking wet—thank god they’re dark colored because that’s part of his brother Dean has no desire to see.

Sam goes out again, leaves Bobby standing there staring at him with a crease on his brow, then comes back in with the bag of Dean’s pills and that godawful foam plastic THING he proceeds to strap around Dean’s throat like a fucking collar. He might as well just chain him to the bed with it.

He swallows the pills because he has no alternative then lays there on his back like a slug and stares at the ceiling while Sam digs through his bag and finds a change of clothes for him.

Dean is angry and embarrassed and ashamed of himself, takes the clothes from his brother and stomps unsteadily into the bathroom—kicks Sam’s jeans and shirts out into the hall, aiming for the wet trail of footprints leading to their shared room and locks himself inside.

Sam is angry and scared and ashamed of himself. When Dean comes down stairs half an hour later and tries to dodge the kitchen Sam calls out to him in a voice that sounds too much like their father’s for either of their tastes. Bobby’s scraping the burned mess out of his skillet into the garbage and watching from the corner of his eye.

Dean plays with the oatmeal Sam puts in front of him, scoops up spoonfuls and lets it plop back into the bowl while glaring with narrowed green eyes at Sam.

Sam glares right back.

Bobby doesn’t think he can take much more of this bullshit and they’ve been there less than twenty-four hours. He slams a plate of sausage links and scrambled eggs down between them and mutters a two syllable condemnation under his breath but otherwise stays out of it.

Dean doesn’t eat the oatmeal, even when Sam lowers his voice dangerously and demands that he eats in that calm, overcompensating voice Bobby will forever equate with courtrooms and attorneys and fake smiles.

Dean looks right at Sam, even and calm as you please, pushes the bowl clean off the table into the floor… and blows a big wet raspberry in his face.

Sam bangs his palms down on the tabletop and pushes himself back, storms into the foyer and slams things around pulling on his coat and his boots and knotting his scarf around his neck like a fucking noose. He slams the door open and closed in a gust of snow filled arctic air and is gone into the yard.

Bobby peels back the edge of the plastic he’s got over the window and watches Sam storm into the yard kicking drifts of snow like it’s his job. He shakes his head and presses the tape back against the wall, goes into the kitchen and finds Dean gnawing on a piece of sausage.

Bobby cleans up the oatmeal and calls them both savages.

Dean regrets eating the sausage barely twenty minutes later. That’s the thing with peptic ulcers. The doctors, apparently, do know what they’re talking about when they warn you against spicy, rich, greasy foods.

Sam comes back inside about an hour later with frostbitten fingers and a drippy nose.

Bobby thinks they’re oversized four-year-olds and threatens to treat them like it if they don’t knock it off.

They spend the rest of the day in tense silence.

0-0-0

Sam makes himself as useful as possible. He cleans the kitchen and the bathroom, goes outside and shovels snow away from the garage, parks the Impala and washes the road salt away and en lieu of an apology he reports to Dean exactly which covers he’d pulled over her and that he’d made sure there was the correct level of anti-freeze in the correct place and that the gas tank was full so there was no condensation.

Dean shrugs stiffly and doesn’t say much. In fact, he doesn’t do much when Sam’s around. He sits on the couch or shuts himself away in the bedroom up stairs, or if he was feeling particularly capricious, he tears off his neck brace and goes down to the panic room to bounce a super ball he’d found godonlyknowswhere against the walls because the sound of it grates against Sam’s nerves.

They were like caged animals. Full of nervous fearful SPITEFUL energy.

Dean sometimes didn’t talk for days.

Sam sometimes picked, poked and prodded trying to get some kind of reaction from Dean, tried to draw him out of the silences but all he was doing was pushing Dean farther in.

Bobby didn’t condone Dean’s behavior, he thought it was damned near as self-destructive as taking a knife to his own hide, but who was he to tell a man how to cope? Instead he stayed quiet, slipped Dean a beer or a cup of coffee every so often, or hinted at the fact he had a stash of leftover Christmas candy he’d got on discount at the supermarket that Sam hadn’t completely decimated yet.

Dean never talked about It directly, but there are only so many ways for a man to discuss Martin Sheen’s performance in _Apocalypse Now_ before you realize it doesn’t have anything to do with Martin Sheen.

Sam couldn’t see that. Wouldn’t see it, maybe… All he saw was Dean hurting and he wasn’t giving his brother the chance to heal, he was just pushing and pulling and trying to smother Dean. Take CARE of him. CHANGE things and that right there was only making it worse for the both of them.

Bobby could hear them at night. Not every night because Dean didn’t sleep every night and most of the ones he did he and Sam were giving one another the silent treatment, but when the lack of stolen caffeine and the ‘may cause drowsiness’ warning on his medication got the better of him he crashed… Hard.

The worst nights were when Bobby woke up with his gun in his hands because Dean had screamed in his sleep. He didn’t really believe Sam’s warning about it until it happened. Didn’t know it was possible for a man’s voice to do THAT. Bobby had heard boys dying slow awful deaths before. Had nightmares about it himself, but none of those screams compared to THAT. It—Dean didn’t even sound human when he woke up like that. It was like he screamed and Bobby could feel it deep inside his chest vibrating his lungs. Like maybe if he kept going he’d just burst your heart like one of those sonic ray guns in the movies. Explode your head from the inside out.

Sometimes, after nights like that, Bobby would go downstairs and find Sam sitting in the kitchen floor with his back in a corner and a whiskey bottle in his hand.

Dean often spent an hour or two in the shower after his Nightmares, hid his sticky underwear in the bottom of the hamper or scrubbed them in the sink so nobody would know how his body had reacted to it. Maybe that right there was the honest to goodness most heartbreaking aspect of all this. Physical damage Dean could handle. He wouldn’t like it, but he’d deal with it… Waking up after a flashback like THAT. Bobby knew Dean’s personality Before, knew what Sam had hinted at in conversations over whiskey, but to have it thrown in his face like that— It was Hell for fuck sake! Bobby knew something awful must have happened along those lines, but it was one thing to know deep down it had happened and a complete different beast to have to face the consequences in your laundry hamper. He tried to keep quiet, tried to pretend he didn’t know, didn’t think anything weird about how often Dean washed his bed sheets. He wouldn’t bring it up wouldn’t mention it because drawing attention to it may just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

He sent Sam out on a hunt on the fifteenth, put his finger in Sam’s face and said that he wasn’t doing Dean any good all antsy and shit. “You two are driving me nuts! I’ll watch Dean, you—you get goin’. Shouldn’t take you more than two days, but I won’t expect you back ‘til Friday.”

Sam had argued, stubborn jackass had a John Winchester streak in him ten miles wide but god forbid you mention it ‘cause he’d bite your frickin’ head off. He eventually went, not because Bobby told him to but because Dean came down stairs and asked what was going on, looked Sam right in the face and said; “What’re you stickin around here for? You got a job, go do it… Kick ‘em once for me.”

Bobby stuck a hat on Dean’s head after lunch and told him to either finish that truck he had taking up space in the garage or put it back in the yard.

“What if I have another fit?”

“You get headaches before ‘em, right?”

He nods, looks mildly ashamed.

“Then just come back in if you get one. It ain’t rocket science.”

It was like someone had lifted a two ton barbell from Dean’s shoulders and with a relieved sigh he pulled on his coat and went for the back door.

That’s where the angel found him two hours later; Sitting on an overturned bucket in the back of the truck with the radio playing, scraping out old sealant after he’d removed the broken back glass.

Dean felt him land, like his heart skipped a beat and he glanced up, caught the tilt of Castiel’s head in one of the side mirrors and turned carefully to look over his shoulder.

For a long time they just stared at one another. Dean swallowed a growing lump in his throat and turned back to the sealant.

“Hello, Dean.”

“Go away.”

“I—“

“I can’t help you, man… I’m brain damaged, remember? Can’t even have a beer without riskin’ a fucking seizure.” 

“I had a moment’s respite.”

Dean snorted, “So you decided to drop in and check on God’s favorite fuckup?”

“I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“Yeah, Castiel. I’m just peachy… Zen even… Got my ‘happy pills’, got a twin-sized bed with clean sheets upstairs and Sam’s on a job. I’m—I’m just great.”

The angel stepped closer, took up space at Dean’s elbow and watched with his brows pulled down and his eyes squinted.

Dean glanced at him and away again; “Dude… I think you need glasses.”

“My vessel does not require them.”

“Really… Why’re you squinting then, huh? You’ll give yourself a headache.”

“My eyes were damaged. It is… difficult to adjust.”

Dean turned and looked at him, tightened his jaw and let his vision Slip.  The gray areas had changed, the night sky color of him bled through in most places, but not on his face. There was a perfect imprint of a hand over his eyes. It was weird to look at because the angel’s vessel was completely unmarked and it was the first time Dean had been able to differentiate the OTHERNESS of him. Where his angelic face fit within the borrowed human one, he couldn’t define the shape of it, not really, just that it was there and part of it was vaguely humanoid in appearance while at the same time not. If he tilted his head just right he could just make out the faint indication of edges, maybe the soft gentle curve of a cheek marred with the perfect outline of a hand—scarred. It made his head ache a little and he pulled back warily. He didn’t want to wind up lying in Bobby’s living room floor with the older man sitting beside him waiting for the sick pressure in his head to ratchet up into convulsions; “What happened?”

Castiel is watching his hands; “Uriel struck me during our confrontation.”

“He bitch slapped you?”

“Think of it more as being touched with a hot brand.”

Dean’s shoulders tense. “He tried to burn your eyes out?”

“Essentially… yes, but he was not entirely successful.”

“’Not entirely successful?”

“I can perceive ambiguous shapes… Outlines if you will, but not with any form or reliability, it is disconcerting but manageable.”

“Manageable?”

“My vessel’s vision is still intact I can navigate well enough relying on it in this plane.”

“So, you’re like… blind?”

“I have more senses than the human mind has the capacity to understand, I am fully capable even without vision.”

Dean snorted, thought maybe Pamela would think that was funny and shook his head.  “Can’t you just—you know, mojo yourself healed?”

“Wounds caused by grace do not always respond favorably to being healed by it, in this case the attempt was unsuccessful.”

Dean felt his stomach bubble unpleasantly. “Grace?”

“Yes.”

His stomach bubbled “What is that? Grace?”

“The ecstasy of God made manifest.”

Dean blinked at him dumbly; “Excuse me?”

Castiel repeats himself.

“No, no I heard you… It just sounds to me like you’re saying Grace is like… like God’s _jizz_ or something.”

Castiel looks visibly insulted.

Dean tilted his head down and lifted his shoulders in a shrug; “Sorry, I’m just sayin’ is all…”

“Grace is energy. A pure creative force. It’s not ejaculate.”

Dean cleared his throat and looked away; “Okay, sure.”

Castiel’s expression relaxed and he watched Dean’s hands move, like scraping dry-rotted rubber was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.

Dean glanced at him uneasily; “So, this grace… everybody’s got some?”

“No.”

Dean leans back a little and rubs his hands clean on his knees; “Alastair said I had it… Is that true?”

“Not entirely…”

“Don’t bullshit me… Just—just tell me the truth; Do I have grace in me?”

He drew his lower lip between his teeth and looked down at Dean’s chest then back to his face; “Yes.”

Dean inhaled carefully and rubbed his fist under his nose; “How’d it get there?”

“I gave it to you.”

“Why?”

“It was the only way to prevent your soul from shattering.”

He shook his head; “What? Keep my soul from shattering? Is that even possible?”

“Yes,” He flicked his tongue over his bottom lip; “If your soul had shattered the pain of it would have driven you insane.”

He snorted, felt his lips curl up; “You mean I’m not crazy right now? Have you seen inside my head?”

“Yes.”

Dean scowled.

“You think very loudly.”

He flipped his wrist and turned back to his task; “Okay fine, grace equals Prozac for souls, got it.”

“You misunderstand me…  A vengeful spirit, as you call them, is a soul tainted by anger and loneliness. A soul driven to insanity is a thousand times worse.”

“Like grenade worse or dynamite belt worse?”

“Like a nuclear explosion worse.”

Dean felt a chill go up his spine. He remembered the state of the land around him when he’d crawled out of his grave, how everything had been flattened and burned.

“A human soul, Dean, like Grace—is a source of immeasurable power. When one shatters the backlash is devastating.”

“So… what you’re saying is, if you hadn’t done what you did, I would have gone Chernobyl?”

“It was not the most ideal course of action, but time was short… so I improvised.”

“You improvised…”

“You began breaking apart while Uriel was trying to seal your soul within your body… The process slowed considerably when I touched you.”

Dean scoffed and shook his head; “Really was groped by an angel, wasn’t I. Fuck.”

“If the ritual had been completed as it should have been, you would not have begun to remember what happened to you in Hell immediately. It would have returned slowly and been easier to bear.”

“You think this is easy?”

“You would have had time to adjust… to heal, before the memories began to reveal themselves. Your soul is still very fragile—you can feel it, can’t you.”

He could. Like a draft through cracked windowpanes. He could feel hellfire burning through. It made his stomach hurt… made that pustule of sealed off memories in his head ACHE.

“Why can’t I remember it? The—uh—the Ritual.”

“My superiors believed it best that neither of us remember the trauma of it, lest it cause more damage.”

Dean turns to him and blinks; “You can’t remember it either?”

“I remember Knowing what needed to be done. Then tearing away part of my grace—“

Dean remembered Anna’s words, how ripping out  her grace had hurt like cutting out a kidney with a butter knife and he let his vision slip again, focus on that midnight colored glow around the edges of Castiel’s vessel, looked him up and down and tried to find that missing piece beneath the new gray scars.

“—I remember having the Intent and realization that I had been successful. That is all that matters.”

Dean drew his lip between his teeth; “Really?”

“It is unnatural for an angel’s grace to be divided, Dean. And painful. I have no need to remember that kind of agony and neither do you.”

“I remember Hell.”

“You were meant to. It is part of the Plan.”

“There you go about your ‘Plan’ again,” He shook his head and scraped rather violently at a stubborn bit of old sealant. “I told you. I don’t want anything to do with your ‘Plan’. I’m done. I—I don’t want this anymore,” It ached in his chest, the words, the truth behind them, but he spat them out anyway; “I’m done with it, Castiel. All of it… Demons, Angels, the apocalypse—hunting. I’m done,” he breathes out slowly; “I just want to fix cars and try to forget. If you want some kind of hero you’re looking in the wrong place.”

“You can’t ignore your fate, Dean.”

“Yeah? Watch me.”

“This is who you are—“

“No, it’s not. I’m not a hero. I’m just some guy who’s got the short end of the stick his whole life and is DONE with it… I’m out. I’m beyond repair, I’m finished.”

“Dean—“

He squeezed his eyes closed and PUSHED with that—with the grace in his chest; “Go AWAY!”

Castiel breathes in and out, shudders— “I will inform my superiors of your… decision.”

Dean rocked back and rubbed his face, when he opened his eyes again the angel was gone. 

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	17. All Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully Thursday, keep your ears open.

0-0-0

There are lights, screams in the darkness—chewing sharp teeth and blazing fiery hands reaching for him, blood and pain and—

Sputnik lets out a single sharp bark and Dean lurches upright, sweat on the back of his neck and fingers curled into claws in his Egyptian cotton sheets.

The dog looks up at him with curious brown eyes and cocks her head to the side.

He breathes carefully, in and out, in and out—“What’re you doin’ on the bed, huh?”

She puts her black nose between her little front feet and whines.

“You’re not supposed to be on the bed.”

She rubs the side of her snout with one paw like she’s crying and looks up at him sadly.

Dean flops back against the pillows and stares up at the ceiling fan, listens to the sound of movement from the street outside the curtains and exhales, reaches over and scratches the fur between the dog’s ears. “It’s OK… I’m not mad.”

She noses into his palm and lays back down, head on his ribs, tail thumping against the mattress, short little legs stretched out beneath her.

The alarm clock says four thirty.

Shit.

Kind of pointless to try and go back to sleep now, not when he has to be up in a little bit anyway. He rubs tiredly at his eyes and reaches for the bedside lamp.

The floor is cold under his feet but the bathroom tile is heated so he heads there first, leaves the door open so Sputnik can roam in and out if she’s needed. Dean spends some quality time in the shower with the steam jets and shaves before he gets dressed.

Sputnik is in the den when he comes out at a quarter after five, lying on her cushion with a tennis ball held between her front paws happily chewing. She wags her tail when she sees him, makes a playful low growling noise as he passes on his way to the kitchen and watches him with keen dark eyes.

His medication is lined up on the kitchen island in a neat row, prescriptions and vitamins in order of importance and quantity. Dean picks up the last and newest addition, the anti-depressant and reads over the warning; “‘May cause vivid dreams.’ Yeah, they got that right,” He rubs his face and props open his Log book, jots down ‘call Carrie about the pills’ and snaps the book shut, weighs the capsules and tablets in his palm and throws them all back at once with a gulp of water for good measure.

The bathroom mirror has had time to dry off and he stops long enough to brush his teeth, splash on cologne and comb his hair before he puts on his shirt and tie, swings on a jacket and calls out to the dog.

Her nails make soft clicking noises on the hardwood and she appears with her tennis ball clenched between sharp little teeth. She dances in counter-clockwise circles while Dean untangles the lead and vest and she tries to lap him in the face when he crouches to get everything snapped into place. He splutters and shakes his head, points a finger at her and says ‘NO’ in a firm voice.

She sits and pants up at him expectantly.

“Good dog.”

Morning walk, business bagged and trashed, Dean’s ready to work. Good Morning, Cincinnati!

Sputnik likes riding in the car, lays with her paws together primly in the passenger seat facing forward with her face turned into the air vent. She doesn’t bark or whine or pace around. She likes to stare at Dean when he hums along to Bob Dylan and The Cranberries at home but it’s a Monday so NPR is all she’s going to get, she bows her head to her paws and sighs.

The security guard in the parking garage greets them, nods them through. The accountants in the elevator ignore their presence, it’s best that way, let the number crunchers mingle with their own.

By Eight o-clock Sputnik’s on her cushion in the corner of Dean’s office with her tennis ball and Dean is mid-conversation with his sales team.

Lunch, quick walk in the back, business bagged and trashed, hands washed. The dog gets her kibble, Dean gets his medication and a cob salad. The boss comes in and Sputnik stares at him with her ears pinned back.

Nothing new. Nothing different.

Long days, longer nights and the dreams keep coming…

The yellowshirt in the elevator on their way out is a surprise. Dean isn’t sure what the kid is doing this far up. Techies aren’t usually up any higher than fifteen unless someone’s computer crashes, must have gotten lost.

“Nice dog.”

Dean hums noncommittally.

“What is he, some kind of dachshund?”

Dean clears his throat, doesn’t look up from his Blackberry. “ _She’s_ a Corgi…”

“Oh, She—uh—like a seeing eye dog?”

“Do I look blind to you?”

“Sorry…”

The damned elevator sure is taking its sweet time, isn’t it.

“I’m sorry, but do I know you?”

Dean breathes in carefully and turns to look at the kid. Tall, broad, with a hunched math geek appearance and floppy hair. His left shoe is untied.

The dog is looking up at the guy with wide dewy eyes, panting at the end of her leash.

“I just got this whole _déjà vu_ thing going on, I swear I know you from somewhere.”

“Yeah,” The elevator stops and Dean exits with a quick little tug on Sputnik’s lead; “Save it for the health club, Pal.”

0-0-0

Julia from PR is out back smoking a cigarette when Dean takes the dog for her afternoon walk the next day. She smiles asks how his department’s doing, if there’s any news on the Pierpont venture. Dean smiles and says it’s a hole in one, for sure. She blows smoke at him playfully and asks what he’s doing Friday, maybe he’d like to go check out this little Greek place she’s fond of.

Sputnik barks at her.

Julia looks down pretending as if she only just realized that the dog was there. It’s a feat most of Sandover’s employees have perfected in the last month, ignoring the furry extension of Dean Smith’s life like they ignore the scars his hair doesn’t quite cover.

They stare, Dean knows they do, everybody does. But they’re smart enough to keep their mouths shut about it, not draw attention to the vest the dog wears or the fact she’s got a cell phone in the pocket on the left all her own with his emergency contacts programmed in and an ‘In The Event Of…’ pamphlet on the right. People make an effort to ignore her to make Dean think that it doesn’t matter, that he’s an equal here, but the second Sputnik barks or whimpers or god forbid Alerts, People stare like he’s some kind of carnival attraction; some too fresh kid with his little fluffy dog and his brain damage.

“I’ve got a big project coming up so now isn’t really the best time, maybe some other time?”

She looks up at him again with her pretty Public Relations Regulation smile and exhales smoke; “Sounds like a plan.”

The Yellowshirt gets on the elevator again as Dean and the dog are leaving for the day. The kid looks tense and that automatically makes Dean tense. It’s not fair really. He’d been having a good day… mostly, Julia notwithstanding. Now there’s this too tall guy with his stupid hair and his long arms and his weirdly familiar face.

Dean transfers Sputnik’s lead to his other hand and draws her toward the wall, away from the guy.

Of course, it’s just Dean’s luck that all the accountants and legal types get off the elevator on thirteen and leave him with the giant. He looks up at the ceiling and exhales miserably. Wonderful.

The kid doesn’t look any more pleased than Dean does honestly, leans back against the far wall and taps his foot impatiently.

Dean stares at the wall.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Christ… “Look, man. I’m not into the whole office romance th—“

The kid wrinkles his nose up; “No—come on, me neither… I just wanna ask you one question.”

Sputnik yawns and Dean glances down at her, how she’s looking up at the stranger like she knows him, tail thumping slowly.

Dean rubs his face; “Sure.”

The guy shifts uncomfortably on his feet, his face twitches; “What do you think about ghosts?”

Dean glances toward the security camera, wonders if this isn’t some kind of prank. “Ghosts?”

“Yeah… do you believe in them?”

“Uh,” Dean chuckles nervously and looks at the security camera again. Punches a few buttons but they don’t take. Vivid dreams, Jesus. He’s never going to be able to sleep again, it’s like it’s written across his face in big curly letters; _‘I dream about ghosts and demons chasing me and eating me alive!’_ Dean clears his throat; “I’ve never given it much thought.”

“Vampires?”

 _Blood and needley teeth—can’t stake ‘em, doesn’t work._ “What? Why?”

The kid twists his hands, looks around nervously; “Cause I’ve been having some weird dreams lately—“

Dean swallows, feels like there’s a knot in his throat and wraps the dog’s lead around his fist a little tighter.

“Yanno what I mean?”

Dean wets his lips and looks away; “No. Not really.”

The dog looks up at him with her head cocked to the side, whines a little and pulls against her lead.

“So, you’ve never had any—“

“Alright, look, man. I don’t know you. Okay? But I’m gonna do a public service and –uh—Let you know that you over share.”

That night Dean dreams about some creepy wispy white thing with a gnarled face. He feels about eight or nine, is wearing weird clothes and carrying a shotgun. The thing is bending over a body on the bed like something out of a B-horror but it’s real—fucking HELL it’s real—and that body on the bed is a boy. Dean feels connected to him. Feels an innate need to PROTECT the kid with his life. To SAVE him… then the dream changes and he’s older, he’s staring at the yellowshirt from the office and—and—

Sputnik’s on the bed again, licking his face.

Dean snarls and sits up, picks her up and deliberately deposits her back onto the floor, points at her little black nose and says “NO” loudly.

She looks at him like he’s stupid.

0-0-0

The fifteenth floor smells like burnt hair and calamari left to sit in the sun.

Dean thinks it’s weird how morbid people can be. Remembers how everyone had stared at the scars on the side of his head and asked why he’d brought his pet to work. How fascinated they’d been for the first two days until the rumor mill had spread around the news and the whole building had taken it upon themselves as polite and well-adjusted individuals to ignore his left side and the dog completely.

Sputnik is panting, whining, but she’s sitting there, every so often looks up at Dean as if to ask him why they can’t leave now, that the smell is awful and she wants to go away from here. Dean wants to leave too but he’s human and basely, morbidly curious.

Why would a guy fry his own brains in the microwave? Jesus, they’re going to have to have the whole floor cleaned, the stink won’t come out of the carpet… Finance is going to freak and PR is going to have a field day! Whooo-boy!

And there he is; too tall, too familiar, floppy hair and a yellow shirt.

Dammit.

Dean can’t help but stare at him. Their eyes meet and the coroner’s wheel the body out past them. A few of the other executives behind Dean pinch their noses and take a few steps back. Dean stays put… The smell is awful but it doesn’t bother him as much as it does everyone else. It’s like he’s used to it.

Trevor from accounting is staring at the gurney with a nauseated expression on his face, Dean turns to him and lowers his voice; “Somethin’ about this seem not right to you?”

Trevor scoffs; “Uh, yeah. The whole thing… I’m tellin’ ya, man. I’ll never eat popcorn again.”

Dean feels something in his chest twinge and he exhales, looks down at Sputnik and scratches behind his ear. She looks up at him with her head cocked to the side and one lower canine poking up over her lip. He shakes his head at her and heads toward the other elevator.

Sputnik runs for her tennis ball as soon as they’re back in the office and begins gnawing on it happily. Dean sits down at his desk and pulls up Paul Dunbar’s personnel file and shakes his head in amazement. What kind of guy would off himself two weeks before retirement? It—it just doesn’t make any sense.

Dean rubs his forehead and tries not to breathe through his nose because he’s sure the smell from Fifteen is still all over his clothes and part of him wants to take a long LONG shower and scrub himself with a fucking brillo pad because he feels vaguely slimy.

Mr. Adler finds him lying on the sofa in his office with the dog in the floor beside him curled up and anxious looking. “Is this a Thing?” He says motioning to the dog and back to Dean. “Should I call someone?”

“I’m fine… that smell got to me is all,” He flaps a hand at Sputnik; “She’s just a worry wart.”

Adler nods; “Yeah, Dunbar… tragic… PR’s sending around a card for his widow, they’re talking about taking up a collection. The health insurance doesn’t cover acts of suicide.”

Dean nods but doesn’t say anything else.

“You alright, Dean? Need any help?”

“I’m fine.”

Adler’s voice becomes calm, easy; “You know, all you have to do is give the word and I can have someone in here to help.”

Dean lifts his arm and looks up at the older man—his eyes are itching weird flashes blinking in the edges of his vision and a sick pressure is beginning to form beneath his ear, piercing back into his head. Maybe this IS a THING… Maybe he could use—

Sputnik growls low in her throat and Adler looks down at her with thinly veiled disgust then back at Dean. “I’ll leave you to it then.”

The dog laps plaintively at his hand and Dean sighs around his own disgust and scratches between her ears.

He calls Ian up as soon as the pressure dissipates and he’s sure it’s not an aura. Sputnik stays where she was, in front of his desk between him and the door, gnawing on her ball, she’s still young. Doesn’t have all her adult-dog teeth yet, he should be grateful she’s not chewing on his shoes at home.

Ian is an anxious looking guy, thin and bug eyed—he makes Dean vaguely nervous simply for that fact. “Yesterday you filled out a four-forty-five-Tee… no problem, just a few errors, we did just switch over to Vista, so you’re probably used to filling out the Dash-R’s, ammirite?”

And Ian looks like Dean’s just shot his grandmother in the face. “Oh, no.”

Dean waves a hand at him; “Nonono, it’s fine. I just need you to redo one today so I can get the show on the road with the invoicing.”

Sputnik whines and when Dean looks down she’s standing beside him with her head lowered and her tail tucked. It’s not an alert posture, this is the same stance she takes when she thinks he’s leaving her, or when they’re outside and a police siren happens to go off to close, or if the building has a fire drill. It’s the same stance she’d took when he’d accidentally left her ball in a cab the day of his interview and he had to buy her a new one. He reaches down and pats her head, feels her fur bristled under her vest and leans forward to peer over his desk to where she’d left her ball. “Mind nudgin’ that over here? She may be cute but she’s kinda dumb sometimes.”

Ian’s staring at the form; “Oh, my god…”

“I’ve got plenty of hand sanitizer, so—“

Ian rubs his hands across his stomach and reaches half toward the form, then pulls his hands back again; “I can’t believe I did this—“

Dean blinks; “Just re-file it and we’re square. I promise… No big deal.”

“I can’t believe I— I can’t believe I did this!”

Dean waves at him, whistles low trying to gain his attention; “Hey, guy—come on. It’s one form, not the end of the world.”

“It affected profits!” And Ian starts to cry—

Dean feels like he’s caught in a joke again, wonders if maybe he’s being Punkd.

Ian’s slipping into full-blown panic attack and Dean pushes to his feet, hands up; “Okay, why don’t you sit down…”

Ian shakes his head, hands tangled in his hair and runs—

Dean’s halfway down the hall, calling the guy’s name with the dog at his heels before he even knows what’s going on. What a day, man. What a fucking day.

Ian is in the men’s room with his hands on the lip of the sink sobbing and Dean stands by the door with his hands up, tries to be placating but he’s not as good at it as he thinks he is and seems to only make it worse. “Hey—hey, seriously! It’s OK! It’s just one little mistake, no big deal, everybody makes mistakes!”

“And over the course of one fiscal year how many hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars do those LITTLE MISTAKES add up to! How much money does Sandover lose annually because of MISTAKES! Five cents for every form printed. Thirty-five cents for the toner for each twenty-page run. Fifty-cents worth of my time, a dollar of yours to re-file it, a whole day’s pay because I didn’t do it correctly the first time. One day for each accountant who hasn’t been able to access the invoice. A one day delay in the audit—That’s upwards of five-hundred dollars right there and the information isn’t even out of the building! And if everyone makes ‘LITTLE MISTAKES’ like that every day how many LITTLE MISTAKES away are we from bankruptcy!” Ian’s face falls, goes ashy pale; “I’ve ruined the company… I’ve ruined Sandover!”

Dean can see his breath and the dog is scratching at the bathroom door, he turns to look and notices she’s not even in the room—the door has shut and she’s out there making a racket and—

The sinks turn on. One by one—clickclickclickclick. The soap dispensers spit and start overflowing sticky pink short-bread scented soap all over the countertop. Dean can’t help but think of that movie with Bill Murray, the one about the ghosts and all the pink slime? What’d he call it… Echoplasm? Something like that—

_‘What do you think about ghosts?’_

That pressure returns to Dean’s head and his eyes itch, start to water and Ian’s got a weird halo of green light around him. Dean’s having some  trouble breathing now and Sputnik is scratching at the door harder, making low whuffing noises to get his attention—Alerting.

“Ian, come on—let’s—let’s get out of here, alright? I—We need to get out of here, now… come on.”

The soap is spilling over into the floor and Dean imagines hands reaching out of it, forms crawling out of the ooze—

Ian turns to him, face set and grim and wet with tears, reaches into his pocket pulls out a pencil… and jams it into the side of his own neck.

Dean’s teeth click and he jumps forward with a shout.

Ian’s on the ground, choking—blood’s squirting out around the pencil and Dean knows for a fact this is not a prank. He is most definitely NOT being Punkd because he knows the smell of blood and that is most definitely blood. He shouts again, hands up and open—he doesn’t know what to do. Something is telling him he does, that he remembers, but he scours everything in his mind, finds numbers and memories of Christmas, breaking his arm that one summer playing baseball with that dick Simmons kid who’d tried to get with his baby sister. Remembers cutting himself shaving quite a few times but nothing. Nothing to prepare him for this.

There’s something standing in the corner. Hunched and brown-gray with hollow empty eyes— It looks like a man and when Dean turns he sees something else. Something that sucks all the light out of the room and looks BACK at him—

Something in his head is pulsing, sending sharp shocks of pain out toward his eyes and down the back of his neck while something else is telling him he KNOWS what that thing is and he needs—he needs—

“HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!”

Things go hazy after that, Dean feels terribly dizzy and nauseated, doesn’t really know where he is for a while. The only thing familiar is the feel of Sputnik’s fur under his hand and a voice telling him he’s going to be OK. Everything’s going to be OK.

The policeman crouching next to him is sympathetic, asks him what he remembers.

Dean keeps his eyes closed and one hand tangled in the dog’s vest where she’s standing between him and the policeman with her back pressed close to his side.

Adler is standing outside the bathroom, watches with keen eyes.

The coroner wheels Ian’s body away and Dean hears one of them make a whispered comment to the other that they might as well park in the garage because ‘another one may drop after lunch’.

The dog stays close to him as he makes his way back to his office, takes up a surprising amount of space for a dog so small. She pauses every few steps to look back at him, make sure he’s still following and even though Adler had asked if he needed any help Dean had said no and insisted on making his way back on his own. For some reason his skin crawled when Adler had spoken. Maybe it was just the Aura, maybe it was the trauma of seeing a guy stab himself in the neck, whatever it was Dean didn’t want anybody touching him right now. Just wanted to sit down and—Jesus, there was blood on his shirt—he could smell it. Could still smell the cloying smoky STENCH of burnt flesh—

Sputnik whuffed at him and he took a deep breath, flexed his jaw and shut the door to his office, fumbled with numb fingers at the buttons of his shirt and yanked it off, threw it directly into the garbage and tore through his desk drawer for the hand sanitizer, wanted to rub it all over himself or take a shower or do something because that SMELL was all over him and it wouldn’t go away.

What was going on?

He found an extra clean shirt in one of his storage cupboards. He’d taken to keeping at least two extra suits just incase something happened. You never know when you’ll get something on your shirt or spill your lunch on your pants or worse. He pulled up the personnel files again, searched through the identification photos alphabetically until he found him. Sam… Sam Wesson. Okay.

Sam had a controlled expression of calm on his face when he appeared. He filled up the doorway easily and Dean exhaled, jerked his chin and told him to shut the door behind him.

Sam was eying the dog, how she followed Dean back and forth, scratched at his ankle when he paused and continued making those low whuffing noises.

Sam cleared his throat; “Is she OK?”

Dean focused on breathing carefully, walking carefully and making sure his buttons were straight. “She’s fine.”

“Why’s she doing that?”

Dean looked up, annoyed, and noticed a faint red flicker around the other man’s shoulders. The longer he looked at it the worse the pressure in his head got until he could barely see straight, reached out blindly and found the wall, pressed his back to it and slid down.

“Uh… Mister Smith—Are you alright?”

“Just shut up and sit down, I’ll be fine in a minute.”

Sam shut up and sat down, tried to take up as little space as possible with his giant frame, tried not to watch how Dean’s hands had begun to twitch.

“Keep—keep an eye on the clock, don’t worry about a-anything else.”

Sam blinked and found it on the wall. Watched it and tried to ignore what was happening across the room.

Dean had drawn his knees up, hands pressed into the floor at either side of his hips, chin bowed to his chest breathing deliberately slow and even.

The dog had taken up a place between Dean’s feet, eyes locked on Sam.

Dean didn’t really move for two minutes fifteen seconds, his hands gave little jerks and every so often his breath hitched on a little grunt, like his abdominal muscles had clenched unexpectedly or his leg twitched a little but that was about it. Sam jumped in surprise when Dean did move, expected something more violent for some reason, but he just rubbed his face then found the dog’s head and scratched behind her hears appreciatively.

“You OK?” Sam thought his voice sounded weirdly loud in the quiet of the room.

Dean nodded.

“Panic attacks?”

“Epilepsy… Help me up.”

Sam stood, offered a hand and just kind of stood there with his arms up and ready in case the other man fell but Dean shoved him back.

He was only slightly unsteady on his feet, looked so tired. Walked over to his desk chair and sat, fished around in his left hand drawer and came out with a jar filled with what looked like jerky strips, passed one down to the dog and then rubbed sanitizer into his hands and finished buttoning his shirt.

“Should I call a doctor or something?” Sam rubbed his hands on his khakis nervously.

“No. I’m fine.”

“You—that was a convulsion? Right? Shouldn’t you go to the doctor.”

“No, that wasn’t too bad. I’ll be fine… Now shut up and sit down.”

Sam shut up and sat down.

He asked about the time, Sam told him. Then they sat there for a while in silence while Dean seemed to regroup, he rubbed his face a lot, took slow deep breaths and let them out. It took about ten minutes and Sam was beginning to get pretty nervous, fidgeting in his seat, but finally the other looked up and cleared his throat.

Dean stared at him, swallowed and stared some more. “I want you to be completely honest with me, alright? No bull, got it?”

Sam shifted in his seat but nodded.

“Who the hell are you?”

He smiled and it was a strange, sad smile; “I’m not sure I know.”

Dean snorted; “What the hell does that mean exactly? Is this some kinda joke?”

Sam shook his head; “I’m –uh—I’m Sam Wesson… I started here three weeks ago.”

“Alright… You cornered me in the elevator, talkin’ about ghosts? And now…” It’s like his tongue goes numb and he can’t make himself say it. It’s crazy. He knows it’s crazy. It’s just his head messing with him like it usually does. It was a coincidence, that’s all.

“Now what?” Sam has this intense look in his eyes, confusion mixed with hope.

Dean shakes his head, rubs his face and turns his chair to stare at the wall; “Nothing…” He inhales deeply and lets it out; “Nothing.”

Sam’s shoulders sag.

“So, you started workin’ here three weeks ago? Yeah, me too,” he exhales and gropes for his briefcase, drags it closer and fishes out the little blue bottle of vitamins he keeps beside his laptop. Funny, they seem to help more than any of his prescriptions. He catches Sam staring as he swallows it down without water and shakes the bottle emphatically; “Just vitamins, it’s not illegal or anything.”

Sam nods, forces himself to relax; “When you were in the bathroom with Ian… did you see something?”

He snorted; “I was kinda in the Aura, guy. I saw lots of things.”

“Aura?”

He exhales; “You ever have a migraine?”

Sam nods.

“You know that pressure feeling you get before it starts?”

Another nod.

“’s like that, only instead of just a headache my brain goes haywire. Phantom smells, weird lights, trouble breathing… The synesthesia is the worst though.”

“Synesthesia?”

“My senses get mixed up. You make a noise my brain translates it as color.”

Sam shifts in his seat. Amazed.

“Like an acid trip but without the fun.”

“And after this you…”

He nods; “So, in answer to your question. I saw a lot,” His heart is beating too quickly still, he doesn’t know how to stop it, kind of wants to lay down and cover his face because the lights are just too much right now, and every little noise feels like fingertips on his skin.

Sam leans forward a little; “Like what?”

“Like a lot of… of stuff,” he wasn’t even sure why he’d called Sam up here anymore. “Look, forget it, I—“

“Did you see a ghost?” The kid looks excited.

Dean’s mouth opens and closes. He shakes his head, tries to deny it; “I was having a seizure! _And_ this guy pencils his damn neck because I asked him to re-file a flippin form!” He gestures violently with one finger at the side of his throat and goes quiet, focuses on the light shining off Sam’s shoulders and head. Squints and tries to pull it into focus past the pressure in his head and chest because it’s so familiar. Why is it so familiar?

“You did didn’t you!” Sam shoves his hands through his hair and comes to his feet; “This is incredible!”

Dean scoffs; “And you’re a lunatic… I’m a lunatic. Why the hell did I call you up here?”

Sam isn’t listening, he’s pacing and gesticulating wildly while he thinks, drawing his fingertips to his lips to gnaw on his nails and shaking a finger at dead air; “Just think for a minute! What if these suicides aren’t suicides? I mean, w-what if they’re something—something NOT natural?”

“I’ll tell you what’s not natural! This conversation! Why are you still here?” He presses the heels of his hands against his brow and exhales between his teeth; “I’m crazy… why am I listening to you? Why am I not freaking out?”

Sam has pushed forward and is leaning on the heels of his hands across Dean’s desk, is looking at him expectantly.

Dean finds the scars through his hair and rubs his fingers over them compulsively, tries not to meet Sam’s eyes, but he can’t help it; “So what? Ghosts are real? And they’re responsible for all the dead bodies around here?”

Sam hooks one of the chairs with his foot and drags it closer, sits down and leans his elbows on the edge of the desk; “I know it sounds crazy, but… Yes.”

Dean scrubs his face and looks at the clock then back to Sam and down at the dog. “Uh, huh… And what exactly makes you think there’s ghosts floating around here killing people?”

He seems to fold inward a little, shrink up to a nervous looking kid and scratches at his neck; “Instinct?”

Dean swallows, swings slowly side to side in his chair and stares at his hands… can still SMELL burned flesh and blood—can feel sticky hands roving over him, under his skin. It should be funny. Should be frickin’ hilarious. His life has turned Scooby-Doo for no reason and it should be absolutely hysterical but it’s not. It’s not because something is telling him—has been telling him for a week now—that something is going on here and he KNOWS what it is, just can’t seem to remember it! “Yeah, me too…”

Sam’s face lights up; “Really?

Dean nods into his palms.

“Those dreams I was telling you about? I was dreaming about ghosts. And then it turns out that there’s a real ghost!”

“So, you’re saying your dreams are special visions and you’re some kind of psychic?”

Sam balks; “No, I mean, that would be nuts. I’m just saying something weird is definitely going on around here, right?”

He nods.

“So, I’ve been diggin’ around a little… I think I found a connection between the two guys,” Sam whips a couple sheets of paper out of his laptop bag and brandishes them with some kind of weird authority, like he does this all the time.

Dean sighs and nudges the dog out of the way when she tries to wedge herself between his feet under the desk. “You broke into their e-mail accounts?”

Sam looks like maybe he only just now gets how wrong that is. “Uh… I used— some skills that I happen to have to… satisfy my curiosity,” He looks down at his hands.

Dean nods, “Nice.”

“Yeah?” He smiles, “Okay, so… It turns out Ian and Paul both got the same e-mail telling them to report to HR room fourteen-forty-four.”

Dean shakes his head; “HR’s on seven…”

“Exactly.”

Dean can feel a weird tingle of excitement in his chest, something he hasn’t felt in… well, he’s not sure he’s ever really felt it even though it’s so familiar. “Should we go check this out?”

Sam blinks, looks left and right; “Like, right now?”

Dean blinks, rubs his knuckles under his chin and looks away; “No… No, it’s gettin’ late, you’re right.”

Sam’s eyebrow slowly cocks up, “I am dying… to check this out _right now,”_ Sam’s leaned forward with his fingers drumming on the edge of the desk, mischief practically glittering in his eyes. 

Sam’s expression is almost gleeful… it’s surprisingly infectious.

Sputnik is dancing excitedly around in circles when they get in the elevator. Sam is watching her with wide eyes and a broad grin.

“Is this normal?”

Dean looks down the length of her lead; “Not really, no.”

“She seems happy about something’.”

Dean couldn’t help but chuckle; “Yeah.”

The fourteenth floor is mostly storage. There’s very rarely anybody there unless they’re after more reams of paper or a carton of paperclips. The refuse of Sandover winds up on fourteen one way or another, so when the elevator stops and halfway down the hall Dean can hear screaming he knows something’s up.

Sam’s amused childish face becomes stern and almost militant as he stalks forward, yanks on the doorknob to fourteen-forty-four and when the knob doesn’t turn he takes a step back and knocks the door in with one solid kick to the knob.

Somehow, Sam doesn’t look like a floppy haired kid with sweaty palms when he’s knocking in doors and standing there with his shoulders broad and his teeth bared. He looks kinda scary until he glances over his shoulder and gives Dean and apologetic shrug, then he’s just a computer nerd again.

The guy’s on the floor, with a shelving unit on top of him—

The dog snarls, pins her little fox like ears back and hunches forward on her stumpy legs, starts barking loudly with her hackles up.

The next thing Dean knows something icy cold has him by the shoulders and he’s in the air—

He vaguely remembers tumbling, end over end—snow and sky and snow and sky and a sickening CRUNCH, blackness, choking and light in his eyes. Some guy in a raincoat fighting a dragon and—and…

There’s a teeming mas of gray and mustard brown standing over the guy under the shelf. A hunched shape that swallows up all the color in the room, Sam’s fighting his way to his feet, shoving equipment that had fallen from the shelves on top of him out of the way, tangled in old power cords and cursing as he tries to stand.

Sputnik is barking, between Dean and the—Jesus, it really is a ghost, isn’t it— Everything else is instinct. He finds something cold and heavy, grips it and swings for the fences.

They get the guy from under the shelf and he dusts himself off, refuses help and laughs in Dean’s face, says he’s so gone, eight fifty an hour isn’t worth this crap and storms out with his hands curled into fists.

Sam balks at the guy’s back and shakes his head; “I’m only getting minimum wage.”

0-0-0

“Did you see that? How’d you do that? It just—“ Sam made a noise like an explosion and his fingertips sprung apart; “—It—he—You poofed him! You poofed a ghost!”

“I don’t think you know what that word means.”

“That was intense! How did you know that would work?”

Dean scratched at the back of his neck; “I don’t know—instinct? It—it was weird.”

“It was awesome!”

He felt his lips curl up, felt something light and proud in his chest swell. “It kinda was, wasn’t it?”

Sam rides a bike, it’s chained up to the security guard’s shack in the parking garage. Dean asks why he doesn’t have a car and Sam shrugs one shoulder; “Can’t really afford it yet, yanno?”

Dean doesn’t.

Sputnik gives up her passenger seat with surprising grace, lies down in the back with her head on Dean’s jacket and noses at her ball where it’s sticking out of Dean’s pocket. Sam keeps looking back at her and chuckling.

“You know… I never would have pegged you as a mini-dog kinda guy.”

Dean shrugged; “Not my first choice.”

“No?”

“She was a gift… A friend gave her to me before I started working again.”

Sam nods. “She’s cute.”

“Yeah, she thinks she is.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sputnik.”

She lifts her head and cocks an ear at him, lower tooth over her lip again. Sam laughs; “I like dogs.”

Dean snorts; “I don’t… She drools on things and gets on the furniture, if I didn’t need to have her around I wouldn’t.”

“Aww, but she’s sweet.”

Another snort; “She’s a flea magnet and I’ve gotta bath her three times a week because she sheds! You try wrangling a wet dog.”

“You know, if you bathe her too often it can MAKE her shed, right?”

Dean’s lips pursed and he looked away. No, he hadn’t known that.

Sam is quiet until they get upstairs into Dean’s apartment, then he lets out a low whistle.

Dean tosses his keys into a bowl on the countertop and checks his watch, “It’s kinda late, but you hungry?”

“Starving.”

Dean goes to the fridge and peers in at the labeled containers; “I’ve got boiled chicken –uh—hard boiled eggs, black bean salsa… I’ve got a ton of arugula if you want a salad, steamed rice with broccoli and cauliflower, carrot pasta and some vegan cheese.”

Sam’s nose was wrinkled up.

“What?”

Sam shakes his head.

“I’m on about eight different medications, five of which cause stomach upset and the other two are for ulcers. I have to watch what I eat.”

Sam lifted his hands in surrender; “You got a beer?”

“Can’t have alcohol while I’m on anticonvulsants,” He shrugged apologetically.

“Dude… that sucks.”

“Don’t I know it,” He pulled out the container of black bean salsa and let the fridge shut, turned to the cabinet and took down a bag of blue corn baked tortilla chips passed them over and watched Sam hunch himself on a stool at the bar. “So, ghosts, huh?”

“Ghosts.”

Dean shook his head and turned to find Sputnik’s evening allotment of kibble, measured out exactly one cup and poured it into a bowl. She stuck her nose in and started chewing before he’d even got it settled on the floor. “Jeez, you’re a pig… Gonna get fat.”

She didn’t seem to care.

Sam snorted in amusement. “I’m tellin’ ya, man… This is weird.”

“Weird? How so?”

“We just poofed a ghost—“

“Please, you really don’t know what that word means, stop saying it.”

“Smoked then—“

“That’s worse.”

Sam rolled his eyes; “Okay, Mister Executive… How else do you explain what happened?”

His mouth opened and closed and Sam’s grin grew wider.

“I don’t know, alright? But it definitely ranks up there on the weird-shit-o-meter.”

“Did you see how he just—just exploded when you got him with that wrench? How’d you know it’d do that?”

“How did you kick in that door? What are you, like a blackbelt? Ex-marine or somethin’?” He snaps his fingers and points at Sam’s chest; “You’re black-ops aren’t you! Some kinda’ sleeper agent—“ He leans close and peers excitedly into Sam’s eyes; “You got a trigger word?”

Sam keeps a straight face for all of three seconds then politely starts laughing out loud. Dean can’t help but join in simply because of the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.

The dog jogs past them and roots around in the basket by the fireplace for a toy and retires to her cushion in the corner.

“Seriously though,” Dean clears his throat and points a tortilla chip at Sam; “How did you do that?”

Sam shrugs one shoulder, “I have no clue—“ He shakes his head and lets out a sigh; “It’s like—like we’ve done this before, yanno?”

Dean shakes his head; “What’re you talkin’ about ‘Before’? Like Shirley MacLain before?”

“No… I just can’t shake this feeling like I don’t belong here… You know what I mean?” He exhales and shoves a hand through his hair; “Like I should do something more than sit in a cubicle.”

“I think most people who work in a cubicle feel that same way—“

“No—Well… Look,” he makes a motion with his hands like he’s sitting a package down on the countertop; “It’s more than that, alright? Like, I don’t like my job. I don’t like this town. I don’t like my clothes-“ He pulls at his shirt in disgust, “-Hell, I don’t even like my own last name—it’s just kind of WRONG—“ He makes a circular motion at his temple with curled fingers; “I feel like there’s something trapped in there trying to get out.”

Dean nodded, he’d felt like that a lot lately. Like the answers were just out of reach, like he was stuck in a bad joke. Like there literally was something in his chest trying to get out.

“I don’t know how else to explain it,” He leaned back in his seat and rubbed his hands on the thighs of his khakis; “It just feels like I should be doing something else… There’s just somethin’ in my blood.”

Dean kind of wanted to ask about possible recreational drug use but he clenched his teeth and looked away, stared at the stark white walls of his apartment, the streamline black furniture, the floors and kitchen implements—and he hated all of it. Hated how his shoes pinched his toes and how his slacks felt against his skin. Hated the smell of his own cologne and the way his hair laid when it was combed. He felt stuck—trapped—in his own skin, waxy and false and restrained—That pressure built up again in his head and he closed his eyes, bowed his head and breathed through it.

What was going on here? Something—something was not right.

Sam crossed his arms and looked up with an expression that begged for understanding; “It’s like I was just destined for something different.”

Dean snorted; “Destiny, huh?”

Sam looked at him warily.

“Destiny is a load of crap. It’s a plot device made up by sad, pathetic, lonely, starving writers to make people think they’re important, that life means more than what it seems.”

Sam scoffed; “Pessimistic much?”

“I’m not a pessimist, I’m a realist. I deal in facts and the facts are this—If destiny was something real you wouldn’t be an underpaid techie who rides a ten-speed and I wouldn’t have a ticking-time-bomb in my head.”

Sam inhales and lets it out between pursed lips, pokes at the salsa with another chip then wags it in Dean’s direction; “What happened there, anyway? I mean—if you don’t mind my asking,” He stuffs the chip in his mouth to shut himself up.

Dean went back to the fridge and pulled out a couple bottles of water, passed one to Sam and took up the stool across from him; “I thought everyone at the company already knew. Grape Vine and all…” He exhales and takes a drink to steady himself, motions to the left side of his head and speaks more to the counter than Sam; “I was in a car accident… The other driver—George Wilkes—was DOA—Was his twentieth wedding anniversary, he and his wife were heading home and they ran a stop sign… T-Boned me in the driver’s side… I was in the hospital for about two weeks, spent a month in a neck brace trying to get back on my feet and… and deal with all this—“ He motions to his head. “Changed jobs and here I am in good ole’ Cincinnati,” He smiles, like an advertisement for the city but it doesn’t meet his eyes. “What about you, huh? Lemmee guess, not much of a market for graphic design majors?”

Sam snorted and shook his head; “Bad break-up… She uh—she kicked me out.”

Dean snorted; “Ouch.”

“It’s stupid… I-I don’t even remember what we were fighting over… It doesn’t seem real, yanno?”

He nodded. Nothing he’d experienced seemed real… Not really. He’d thought, at first, it was just because of his head… but—but maybe it wasn’t. “So… Ghosts, huh?”

Sam laughed. “What’re we gonna do about this? We can’t just sit back and do nothing. This thing could attack anyone.”

Dean nodded; “Well, we handle this like anything else. Know your competition.”

“What?”

“Research, Sammy, research.”

0-0-0

Sputnik was dancing again, round and round and round. Sam was laughing at her behind his hand, obviously enjoying it. Dean kind of wanted to pick her up just so she’d hold still. All the movement of her, the wiggling dumpy presence of her near him was making his heart race.

Fourteen-forty-four was just like they’d left it, including the mess in the floor. Sam took the desk while Dean and the dog went toward the back of the room scanning each box of files and antique computers. It would have been easier to have an idea what they were looking for other than the general; ‘DNA remains’ thing. Dean’s pretty sure something like that would have been tossed out years ago. Big Business wasn’t exactly sentimental you see, unless they were paid to be or it made them look good to the public. Sandover Bridge and Iron wasn’t any different in that respect.

“Find anything, Sam?”

“Uh… No, not really. Just a whole bunch of condom wrappers… Guess we know where everyone goes when they say they’re ‘getting supplies’.”

Dean snorted. “Did they even have condoms in nineteen-sixteen? Because I don’t think there’s enough hand sanitizer in the world if THAT’S what we’re looking for.”

Sam laughed.

Dean pulled a box of files off the shelf and bent to page through them. The dog stuck her nose in and he pushed her away. “Lay off!”

Sam hummed and lifted his head. “You talkin’ to me?”

Dean rolled his eyes. “I found the pre-nineteen-twenty files over here.”

“Anything personal?”

“No, just work orders… How did people live like this? Ten cents an hour? I mean Jesus.”

Sam chuckled and kept looking.

Technically, they weren’t supposed to be in the building. Even though Dean had worked later than this before, you’re really not SUPPOSED to be there after ‘business hours’ and for some reason he can’t find it in him to intervene when a security guard waltzes in and pulls Sam out. What’s he supposed to do? Go all Jet Li on the guy? Sam can take care of himself, right? Right.

Right?

Dammit.

He keeps looking, pawing through file cabinets and boxes looking for something with the right date. If they can find this, Whatever it is, they can take it back to Dean’s place and toss it in the fireplace, get some sleep and… He isn’t really sure after that. Maybe he could call in sick and just take a day off.

That’s when he finds the photo and everything slots together in his head. He passes by it every day on the way to his office. The whole ‘Building the Dream’ thing is a focal point on Twenty-two. Every new employee, even the yellowshirts, are given a professional tour of the building and shown the display because it ‘improves company morale’ and helps establish a point of pride and one-ness. ‘You’re all a very important part of the Sandover Dream!’

“Son of a bitch…” He turns and finds Sputnik where she’s wandered off, found a mouse hole to scratch at and he picks her up with a derisive snort; “Training my ass, remind me to thank James for making sure you were from a reputable trainer.”

The yellow light is on above the elevator and Dean stares at it, presses an ear to the door and listens to the sounds echoing up the shaft. Sputnik squirms in his arms and he puts her down, wraps the lead around his fist and— There’s a horrible noise in the elevator shaft a hard deep LURCH of screaming metal and vibrating cable. It makes Dean very nervous and he fumbles for his phone, holds down the call button and hisses into the microphone; “Hey, you OK?”

Dean doesn’t think much about Sam saying he’d call back. Thinks it’s a little weird the guy’s voice is all high pitched and breathless but maybe he’s just playing the elevator game with the security guard. Dean’s not one to judge, guy has a thing for office romances, whatever, yanno? Dean’s got a thing for blue eyes go figure.

It’s almost twenty minutes of waiting. Dean fishes Sputnik’s tennis ball from his pocket and takes to throwing it down the hall and watching as she darts after it, trying to amuse himself with how she prances around and runs halfway down the hall before she realizes he hasn’t actually thrown the ball, races back and prances around some more.

“Dean, you there?”

He throws the ball and reaches for his phone, laughs as he depresses the button; “How the hell did you get him to have elevator sex with you, huh? Guy’s a hard nut to crack—“ He laughs at his own pun.

“What? No—Jesus—“ He inhales deeply and lets it out shaking.

“Hey, I’m open minded. You’ve got a uniform kink, so what?”

“Just shut up… Did—did you find anything?”

Sputnik runs back with her tail in the air dark eyes sparkling and drops her ball at Dean’s feet expectantly, starts prancing around in counterclockwise circles.

“Yeah. Meet me on Twenty-two.”

Sam exhales; “Okay, yeah… Just—take the stairs, alright?”

“What? Aw—ew, man. Did your dad not teach you to carry condoms in your wallet?”

“Stairs, Dean… Please, stop talking.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m goin’,” It’s a little weird, but Dean supposes he could use the exercise. Sitting behind a desk all day isn’t exactly conducive to a trim waistline. Maybe he should take the stairs more often. Sputnik seems to enjoy them so he lets her take the lead and watches her bounce upward on stubby little legs. It’s kind of funny until the duffle bag with their ghost hunting equipment in it starts banging against his back and pulling on his shoulder. Damned thing hasn’t felt right since the accident. He switches hands a few times but it doesn’t really help.

“Yeah, I need to workout more…” He shakes his head; “Me and you got a date with a treadmill this weekend, dog. That’s all there is to it.”

Dean’s waiting when Sam arrives, is rubbing hand sanitizer into his palms because they still feel sticky with dog spit from the ball the dog’s chewing on by his feet and his cuffs smell a little bit like it as well so he rolls them up. He hears Sam coming and turns with a grin—

“Whoa…”

Sam clears his throat and his eyebrows hitch toward his hairline.

Dean feels something cold settle in his stomach; “Uh… You—You OK?”

“Peachy.”

“Yeah… that—that’s a lot of blood.”

Sam crouches down over the duffle and starts rummaging through it.

“You sure you’re not a sleeper agent? Because I—I’m really…” Dean swallows nervously; “Black Ops? KGB?”

Sam looks up at him with an expression of barely withheld nausea and adrenaline but doesn’t say anything.

“Okay then…” Dean motions to the lighted display; “P.T. Sandover’s gloves… I-I figure there’s some kind of DNA in there, like a nail clipping or a hair or something,” He can’t help but stare at the red splattered on Sam’s shirt… in his hair and the creases of his neck. “—or… blood.”

Sam picks up one of the fireplace pokers and holds it out, like he’s a caveman passing over a club.

It’s almost as if the instant the glass breaks the temperature in the room drops thirty degrees.

Sputnik releases a low snarling noise and the next instant Dean’s flying through the air. He hits the wall hard and his head knocks back on his neck with surprising force as it collides with the wall. It hurts… It really—really hurts. All down his back and up into his head. It feels almost like the healing bones have cracked again and for an instant he’s afraid to move. Then he hears Sam cry out in shock and when Dean opens his eyes he sees Sam lying against the far wall with a writhing mass of gray and brown with a vague man shape at its core bending over him.

Sam thinks quick, throws kosher salt and the form dissolves in a waft of ashes and embers. “Dean, you OK?”

Sputnik is standing over him whining, lapping at his face and he shoves her back, rolls slowly onto his front and pushes up with shaking arms. There’s something wet on his forehead, running into his left eye. He makes it to his hands and knees and rubs at it with the back of his wrist, sees a thick smear of red on his skin; “Wonderful,” He pushes up to his feet and leans against the wall, watches as the world tilts fractionally and moves toward Sam prodding at the cut along his hairline. “I got French kissed by a dog and I ruined not one, but TWO two-hundred dollar shirts in one day.”

Sam snorts.

It’s the second toss into the wall that does it, Dean’s sure. His head can only take so much rattling anymore before it starts rattling back. The world dissolves into pain and swirling colors. The ghost is gray and brown and electric blue and swallows up everything, he’s reaching forward hand curled and hungry toward Dean’s chest—

Something inside him recoils, steals his breath and Dean’s hands come up, the left over his chest and the right out, fingers splayed toward the ghost—

“NO!”

Everything stops—

Shudders…

—And something in Dean cracks.

It HURTS.

Everything HURTS. He doesn’t know where he is, why it’s happening or what’s going on. He’s blank inside and nothing makes sense. There’s nothing but that choking world ending PAIN.

Sam is red at his edges and his eyes are black. He’s too close—Everything’s too close and looking at it BURNS along his optic nerves and back into his head like splinters of the fucking sun. He squeezes his eyes closed and curls in on himself because it—it just HURTS and he wants it to STOP!

It’s bad, he knows it’s bad. Any time he sees colors around people it’s bad. Unnatural. HURTS because it’s BAD. He shouldn’t do it because it’s bad. IT’S BAD TO DO IT! IT HURTS BECAUSE IT’S BAD! DON’T DO IT IF IT HURTS! BADBADBADBADBADBADBADBADBADBADBADBAD!

Sam’s on his hands and knees when he comes back to himself, bent forward with his head on the ground to look into Dean’s face, keeps saying his name over and over. “Can you hear me? Dean? Can you hear me?”

Sputnik is lying there in front of him, has wedged herself between his arms and is licking sadly at his twitching hands.

She hadn’t Alerted… What—what’s happened?

Something isn’t right.

Something _isn’t right…_

He’s shaking and sweating like he’s run a marathon, his head hurts. Something in his chest ACHES.

“Home…” He coughs and the world swims before his eyes, his throat is sore, has he been screaming? “Take—take me home.”

0-0-0

Looking back on it, twenty flights of stairs when he can’t even see straight may not have been a good idea. It takes almost an hour. Dean doesn’t feel fat like he knows he should, in fact he feels stretched too thin, slouches in the passenger seat of his little car with Sputnik between his feet, head against his shin looking up at him with big dark sad eyes while Sam tries to navigate the streets.

He feels accomplished, scared shitless but accomplished. The ghost is dead because of them and Dean supposes he should be happy about it. That he’d faced the Scooby-Doo horror and come out on top, but he’s just so tired. He’s tired and something isn’t RIGHT. He feels wasted and confined.

Sam asks for the fifteenth time if he’s sure he doesn’t want to go to the hospital. He nods, keeps a hand over his eyes; “Wasn’t a seizure… She didn’t Alert. I don’t know what it was,” He doesn’t mention all the weird shit he saw when the ghost had tried to touch him, or what had made him lash out at it like that. He doesn’t know what Sam would think of him if he said it, if he just looked over and said; _‘You dreamed about ghosts and one showed up… Well, I’ve been dreaming about demons ripping me apart.’_

He tells himself it’s just the brain damage. That it’s just the pills messing with his subconscious, that just because Ghosts are real doesn’t mean demons are… does it?

Sam helps him up the stairs and into his room, waits around until Dean’s out of the bathroom and shuffling into the kitchen before he says anything.

“You… you’re OK, right?”

Dean nodded, sorted out his pills and took them one at a time because his throat hurt too much to throw them all back at once. “Yeah, just tired.”

Sam nodded, looked down and caught the dog following Dean around looking up with such a worried expression on her face. Like she didn’t understand what was going on.

“Yanno, aside from the whole getting thrown around like a football thing,” Dean leaned back against the sink and smiled; “That was kinda fun.”

Sam’s shoulders relaxed a little; “It was awesome.”

Dean wagged a finger at him; “You’re SURE you’re not a Sleeper?”

Sam smiled, nodded; “Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Just checkin’.”

“What about you, huh?”

Dean snorts lightly, rubs his face like he could sleep for a year; “Nothin’ so exciting.”

Sam nodded; “You swing like you know what you’re doin’.”

“I played baseball as a kid—wasn’t ever gonna be a career, but it was fun while it lasted. You?”

“Soccer… Blew out my left knee in high school kinda just… I don’t know. It’s not important,” He rubbed the back of his neck and grinned. “I haven’t had fun like tonight in years… Ever.”

“You mean besides the…” He motioned to the blood on Sam’s shirt.

He looked up at the ceiling; “Yeah.”

“Do I wanna know what happened?”

“No. Not really, no.”

“So long as you didn’t go all ‘God Father’ on the guy because that—that’d be kind of messed up in a way I’m not prepared to deal with at the moment.”

Sam snorted and for a while they just kind of looked at one another and it—it was nice in a way nothing had been for either of them in a long time.

“We should do this again,” Sam rubbed his hands on his knees.

“Yeah. Yeah, definitely,” Only without the blood, but yanno.

“No, I mean it. We should keep doing this. There’s gotta be other ghosts out there… We—we could really help people.”

Dean’s smile seems strained; “Right… right. Like the Ghostfacers.”

“No. Really, I mean… For Real. Like go find ghosts and—and kill them.”

Dean laughs nervously; “You can’t be serious.”

“I kinda am. Yeah.”

“So, what? We just quit our jobs and hit the road?”  
Sam looks around like there’s an echo; “Yeah.”

“How would we live?”

Sam’s mouth opens and closes.

“What? You hacking people’s bank accounts? Stolen credit cards? Hitting up old ladies for nickles when you open jars for them? Be realistic, man. I’ve got medical bills a mile long. Your ride is a busted ten-speed you’ve had since you were what, thirteen?”

“Fifteen—“

“My point is, Sam. That it doesn’t make sense. Yeah, OK, I can see the whole Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn—Hunter S. Thompson weirdo bullshit romance of it all but… I mean, come on! What’re we gonna do for money? You can’t just traipse across the country looking for ghosts to kill when you can’t afford to put gas in the tank or food in your mouth. It’s reckless and stupid—not to mention probably illegal,” He crosses his arms defensively, as if trying to push the allure of it away; “What, we’re gonna just sail off into the sunset? Eat greasy diner food every day and share a shitty motel room every night?”

“That’s all just details, man—“

“Details are everything… That’s how the world works. It offers you a great deal and sucker punches you with the fine print.”

“But it feels right—You can’t deny how right it felt.”

Dean looks away, can’t meet his eyes because the guy’s right. He’s right and Dean feels like an idiot because everything is telling him that it should be wrong. That it’s dangerous and his whole savings would be gone in just a few weeks. What if something happened? What if one of them got hurt?

“You can’t just go off hunting ghosts without some kind of contingency plan, Sam. You can’t put your life on the line like this without health insurance!”

“We did just fine tonight—“

“Did we?” He meets Sam’s eyes evenly; “You’re covered in a dubious amount blood, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a concussion… Which, I might add, is extremely dangerous given my condition— I should probably be hospitalized. We vandalized Sandover company property— _Destroyed_ company property. Broke God only knows how many laws while doing so… And YOU wanna keep doing it?”

Sam exhales, flexes his hands; “Alright… Confession.”

“Oh, jeez—you are black ops, aren’t you—“

“No, just—just listen, OK, please?”

Dean holds up his hands and leans back against the sink, props himself up with his elbows.

“Remember those dreams I told you about? With the ghosts?”

He nods.

“Well, I was fighting them… with you.”

“With me?”

“Yeah, like… professionally. We were these, Hunters, okay? And we were friends… More like brothers, really… I mean, what if that’s who we really are? I mean, you saw us back there working together. The ghost was scrambling brains! What if it scrambled ours?”

“My brain was already scrambled, so…”

Sam rolled his eyes; “Just hear me out. What if THIS—“ He pulled at his shirt, and motioned to the length of his body in its cheap khaki pants and perpetually untied shoe; “—Isn’t who we are? What if we think this is our lives, but it’s not?”

Dean looked at him, actually stopped to look at him, glanced around at his apartment and wondered… _what if he’s right… What if this is all just a dream? What if I’m not who I think I am? Who am I if I’m not? Who am I if I actually am this?_ He shivered, reached up and ran his fingers over the scars on his head.

_What does any of this mean?_

His skin felt clammy, not his own and Dean almost expected the dog to come over and start whuffing at him, but she didn’t. She just stayed there on her cushion staring at him expectantly with a rubber newspaper in her mouth.

“Look, Sam… I—I think you should go home now… Get some rest. You’re obviously upset and—“

“I’m not upset! This—this is WRONG and you know it!”

And the problem was that he did know it… he felt it in his chest and in that weird ache in his head—and it scared the hell out of him.

“Go home, Sam.”

He blinked, shook his head in disbelief and looked Dean up and down like maybe he didn’t know him at all, made a helpless little popping noise between his lips and left.

0-0-0

Dean called in sick the next morning. Told Mr. Adler he’d had a Bad One, the night before and was still a little loopy. He spent the morning in bed with the blankets over his head and the dog lying curled in the bend of his knees. He didn’t have the heart to put her back on the floor.

He got up long enough to take his morning pills out of their bottles and line them up on the countertop. He picked through them, reciting in his head their names and purposes. These for his stomach, these for his head, these for depression… these vitamins to help with side effects, those for anxiety, this one for joint pain in his shoulder, calcium, D, E and B-12 for his bones, ginseng because it was supposed to help with libido… He snorted and tossed that pill toward the garbage, thought twice and chucked the bottle as well. Put back the calcium, D, E and B-12, Xanax and Prozac, Glucosamine Chondroitin and stared down at the little line of pills that were left. Anticonvulsant, Pepcid-AC, vitamin C and valerian root.

Five pills instead of his usual twelve. He swallowed those and went back to bed, let the dog under the covers with him and stared at his phone for a while. Dialed his dad’s number—and got a grocery store instead. Tried his mother’s—disconnected. His sister’s—a Laundromat. He tried his friend James—a church.

Dean stared at the walls of the blanket cave around him and for a minute was afraid to pull back the fabric and see what was really out there. He rubbed the wetness from his eyes and groped for Sputnik’s head with both hands, found familiarity in the softness of her fur and the wet stripes of her tongue against his skin.

Dean Smith got up, pulled on a jacket and fastened the dog’s vest and lead in place. Then he went to work.

The other executives gave him funny looks as he passed and he caught his reflection in a mirror in the lobby. His hair was wild, looked like it had never seen a comb before and his face was puffy. He didn’t look like himself and maybe that’s why it felt so good.

Mr. Adler appeared just a few moments after Dean made it into his office and began looking through his drawers.

“Dean—I didn’t expect you in today. How are you?” He closed the door behind himself and eyed the dog distastefully when she lowered her head and pinned her ears back at him.

Sputnik had never liked him. Dean was kind of starting to sympathize.

Adler looked different—brighter. Dean had to squint a little to focus on him. It—it was weird.

“OK,” He said slowly, “Still kind of out of it… I thought I’d left my Log here… Need to keep track of these things, yanno?”

Adler nods. “You missed a big meeting.”

“Sorry.”

“I’ll abbreviate it for you…” He unbuttoned his blazer and nudged one of Dean’s chairs back, “The Higher Ups are very pleased with the progress you’ve made.”

Dean nodded, sat because Adler was easing into a chair across the desk from him. Sputnik sat on his feet, vigilant and looking up at him expectantly. “I’m just doing my job—“

“Don’t be modest… You’re a unique man, Dean, in a very unique position.”

His mouth twitched and he kind of wanted to pull at his collar, like it was choking him. He felt watched—stared at—locked in.

“It’s important to me and to the company, that you’re happy… I’ve been authorized to make you an offer to ensure that happiness,” He slides a little scrap of paper across the desktop toward Dean. And reclines in his seat with a smarmy looking grin on his face.

Dean swallows a bitter taste in his throat and reaches for the paper, picks it up and blinks in surprise at the number written in quick sure strokes. “Oh… That—that’s very generous.”

“Purely selfish, really. We wanna make sure you’re not going anywhere.”

He smiles to himself, amused that even though he’s messed up someone still wants him.

“We see big things for you, Dean… Maybe even Senior VP Eastern Great Lakes Division. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll have to work for it. Seven days a week, lunch at your desk. But in eight to ten short years… that could be you.”

It feels—it…

It feels like a death sentence and he knows it shouldn’t. It should feel safe, secure—he should feel so grateful… Why then, does he want to tear his own skin off and run screaming from the room?

Something in his chest is constricting, feels caged and restrained… he feels restrained—blinded because when he looks up all he can see on Adler’s face is cold eagerness.

Dean inhales and looks down at the dog again. She tilts her little head, tooth over her lip once more. Like she thinks she’s big and tough and invincible not a twelve pound pup that probably won’t grow big enough to jump off the back of the sofa without breaking one of her short little legs.

He taps the slip of paper against his blotter and lets his breath out slow, slides the note back across the desk to Mr. Adler and speaks; “Well, thank you. Thank you, Sir… but I—I am giving my notice.”

Adler looks like Dean’s just slapped him in the face with a wet fish and possibly mooned his mother.

That weird brightness to him flares and Dean squints, puzzled and finds himself peering into it—not at the man’s face… but at his chest—It… What _is_ that?

“This is a joke. You’re kidding me, right?”

Dean shakes his head and he can feel the dog’s tail thumping happily against his leg as he speaks, like she can understand him or something; “No… I’ve recently—very recently, realized that I have some other work I have to do that’s… it’s very important to me.”

“Other work—You mean another company?”

“No… I… I just—“ He rubs his brow; “It’s hard to explain. This just—” He motions to the office, the ridiculous fucking track suit he’d put on to leave the house. The jug of disgusting herbal-watery-piss-colored-crap in the corner he’d been drinking for the past week. “—this isn’t who I’m supposed to be.”

Adler leans back in his seat and looks him up and down; “You’re sure?”

He takes one last look around the office and pushes himself to his feet, “Yeah… I’m—this isn’t me, I’m—“

And Adler is too close all the sudden, smiling to broadly and the brightness of him is too much—TOO MUCH.

Dean chokes—squeezes his eyes closed and the next thing he knows he’s sitting down again staring at the surging brightness of an angel in his boss’s skin.

“Son of a bitch!”

Sputnik is growling low in her throat, head down and hackles up.

Dean can’t do much more than glare at the angel with his lips rolled back from his teeth in rage. It doesn’t come back all at once, maybe that’s a blessing. It bleeds back slow and gentle like someone’s cracked open a tap in his head instead of breaking the whole fucking dam.

He remembered sitting on that overturned bucket in the back of the truck at Bobby’s remembered Cas leaving. Remembered hearing wings again a moment later and turning to find some stranger—some balding douche bag in a silk suit.

The guy had smiled, bright and white with his four arms folded pensively at his chest around the muted violet of his vessel’s soul—how he’d glowed through the poor bastard’s eyes and out his ears. “Hi, Dean… You need to come with me now.”

And Dean had had only a moment to suck in a deep breath to shout for Bobby—had swung his scraper at the guy like a knife and felt his shoulder pop out easy as you please when the guy caught his arm, stopped the motion dead and eye the glowing edge of the blade.

“Oh, that’s something we’re going to have to nip in the bud, right now—“ And he’d put two fingers to Dean’s brow.

It felt like he was being strangled—compressed—CRUSHED!

Something had wrapped around that Thing—that GRACE—in his chest and SQUEEZED—

Dean’s vision had tunneled out all the color of the world fizzled—and died.

Dean felt like he couldn’t see anything and panic ramped up in his chest. He shouted in rage—tried to jerk back from the angel—pushed at the hand against his brow but it kept going—kept pushing and his memories were being snuffed out one by one. Like balloons popping, swelling bright and GONE.

He vaguely heard Bobby yelling his name and then there was nothing. There was a time, bright and thoughtless, where he was in a strange place with strange walls and a soft bed. Strange faces flashing in his head that slowly named themselves as the stranger bending over him hummed something by the Kinks with a smile on his face.

There is Mother and Father and Sister. There is School and College and WORK. There is suddenly all this KNOWLEDGE.

There is Dean Smith.

He is alone in his apartment when he wakes from his first nightmare and someone is knocking on the door. He pushes himself up, is dizzy and the neck brace cuts into his chin, he wants to take it off but the doctor said not to and he has to do what the doctor says.

There is a strange man on his doorstep. He blinks stupidly through sleep swollen eyes, feels defensive and wary of him—“Can I help you?”

He has blue eyes and a pinched, uncomfortable smile, he reaches out a hand and when Dean takes it he feels a weird warmth creep into his skin and the words seem to follow the warmth, take root in his head and everything is OK.

“I’m… James. We went to college together. We were friends.”

Dean smiles, invites him in, apologizes for not remembering; “I was in a pretty nasty accident a couple weeks ago, things are still kind of hazy… Do you want something to drink? I can’t have alcohol. The doctor said no alcohol. Is water OK?”

“That’s fine.”

Dean shuffles back into the living room, eases himself down onto a chair facing Friend James and notices he’s got a dog on his lap.

“It bites—don’t—don’t let it get me—“

James looks right at him and speaks slowly; “She won’t hurt you. She’s a gift…” His brows curl in when he realizes Dean is still trying to put as much space between himself and the dog as possible. “She’s been trained.”

“Trained?”

“Yes. She won’t hurt you, I promise.”

“Okay…” He settles, trusts him. “What does she do?”

“Your brain injury?”

“Yeah, I was in a pretty nasty accident a couple weeks ago, things are still kind of hazy.”

James looks sad; “I know… You have epilepsy. She will Alert you before an attack so you can be safe. So you won’t be hurt.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” He stares at the dog; “What’s her name? She has a name?”

“Her name is Sun Princess Ursula Tinynose I’llkillya.”

Dean blinks at him slowly. “That’s a funny name.”

James looks confused, looks down at the dog and back to Dean; “She doesn’t think so.”

The dog sneezes.

“She says you can call her Sputnik because you’re fond of shortening names as a sign of affection.”

“Sputnik was a Russian Satellite.”

“That’s fascinating…” James sets the dog down and pushes to his feet. He hasn’t opened his bottle of water. “I’m out of time… I have to go.”

“Oh. Okay. Can I call you?”

He looks sad, confused and nods; “Any time,” and then he’s gone.

When Dean wakes from his second nightmare he remembers James in college. They laughed and joked and told funny dirty stories. James moved away, they don’t talk much anymore. Dean doesn’t really like him much but he brought Dean the dog to help, to keep him safe, so he can’t be all bad, no matter what his memories tell him.

He feels more solid in his skin, more himself. More Dean. He remembers he has a job interview that day and when he gets dressed after his shower all his pills are lined up on the counter and his Log is sitting there with everything he needs to know in it.

The dog is dressed in a little vest and chewing on a tennis ball on a cushion in the corner and the world seems right with itself.

He starts work on a Wednesday, is greeted by a balding man in a silk suit he’s never seen before and welcomed with a firm handshake; “Welcome to Sandover Bridge and Iron, Mr. Smith. I’m Zechariah Adler, Senior Vice President.”

“Please, call me, Dean.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

 


	18. Song and Dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was so late. I was very sick and had to spend the night in the hospital getting fluids and stares from the staff and didn't feel like doing much until the other day. I hope to have more chapters the day after tomorrow as long as everything goes alright.

0-0-0

The dog was a menace.

Dean couldn’t help but imagine black, demonic flames bursting from her skin when he looked at her, even though the past three weeks were still very much alive and present in his mind. He was angry, wanted to find Castiel and knock some sense into him.

When had he EVER given the angel the slightest HINT that he liked dogs?

He did NOT need a dog, especially a stumpy legged, fluffy little midget of a dog. If Dean ever even considered being NEAR a dog after hell, it wouldn’t have been one that looked like this. He could feel his machismo dropping by degrees with every breath.

“What’re you lookin’ at?”

She picked up her ball and turned big brown eyes to him tail wagging playfully.

Dean opened his wallet, counted out all the credit cards and ATM cards and squirreled them away. He’d been working at this fucking place for the past month he was damned well keeping what money was there. If Zechariah didn’t like it he could kiss Dean Winchester’s ass.

He went through the desk for anything useful and hid it in the briefcase. Laptop? Yes, thank you. He would take that! As well as the phone—could sell it.

There were doughnuts in the executive break room… Dean lifted a whole box, stuffed an extra between his teeth and made quickly for the elevators the dog trotting along behind him with her ball in her mouth.

Sam was waiting in the parking garage he’d been there a while, had taken to riding circles on that stupid bike, popping wheelies (or at least trying to) and acting like a lunatic. The security guard was completely ignoring him so Dean assumed the angels had already rebooted his brother’s noggin.

He saw Dean arrive on the elevator clenched the hand brake a little too hard and almost went ass over teakettle across the handle bars. He lifted his chin in greeting and called out loud enough to be heard across the distance; “Bobby’s pissed.”

“Yeah, well, when is he not pissed,” Dean snorted around his doughnut and pointed to the assugly car; “You’re drivin’ I feel dirty just thinking about it.”

Sam caught the keys when they were tossed his way, popped the back hatch and rammed the bike in. Dean gave him a funny look but he shrugged; “It’s a nice bike.”

The dog barked.

Loudly.

Sam turned and stared down at her eyes growing larger with every second. “You’re takin’ the dog?”

“No.”

“You can’t just leave her here.”

“I don’t want that THING anywhere ne—“

Sam had crouched down in front of her and had her fuzzy face between his big hands. “Where’d she come from anyway?”

“Castiel—“

“Yeah, we’re keepin’ her.”

“Sam!”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“We get in the car and drive away—“

Sam gave him a Look. Eyes narrowed, lips compressed; “She helps you, we’ve both seen that.”

“I don’t—“

“I looked it up, Dean. Dogs that can Alert someone of an impending seizure are rare. It’d make things a LOT easier if she stuck around,” He turned back to the dog and pressed her face between his hands until the remaining baby fat wrinkled up around her eyes. He giggled—actually fucking giggled.

“I don’t want some frickin’ half-dog followin’ me around! She stinks and barks and DROOLS! She’ll piss on the seats, man! I don’t want my baby smelling like dog and piss!”

Sam ignored him, picked the dog up, and deposited her in the back seat of the Prius. She tried to climb over the center console and into Dean’s lap but he shoved her away and slouched dramatically in his seat.

“You don’t have to be so mean to her,” Sam climbed in the driver’s side and started the engine.

“I don’t like dogs.”

“Well, get over it, she helps. I’ve seen her help.”

“Shaddup.”

Dean was in a slightly better mood after they left the bank, he lounged in his seat counting out the bills with a stupid grin on his face.

“You look like you wanna spread it out on your bed and roll in it naked.”

“I just might.”

They swing quickly by Dean Smith’s apartment and raided the place. Sam steals some of the food from the fridge, packs up the dog’s toys and her cushion and Dean, on a whim, steals the very pillows from the bed, when Sam catches him he throws one at his brother’s face and says simply; “Try it.”

It’s quick and not by any means pretty, but they’re used to getting in and out fast and leaving the nonessentials. Dean stuffs all the medication into his pillow case along with the expensive underwear from the drawers and fills another with clothes from the closet. Sam laughs at him but helps.

Sam says there isn’t anything back at the apartment he’d been given worth going back for but Dean makes him go anyway just so he can see the place, see what kind of home his brother’s had over the last month.

It’s sensible. No frills, the toilet won’t stop running but the appliances are in OK repair and although Spartan it’s nicer than any of the hotels they’ve lived out of their whole lives.

Dean steals a beer from Sam’s fridge and cracks it open. Sam tries to take it away but he bares his teeth and says loudly; “ONE! Just one! I swear!” And Sam relents.

He takes the rest for the road but, just as he’d said, only drinks one.

Sam ends up taking some of the clothes in his closet, mostly the pants like Dean had, because the majority of his jeans back at Bobby’s have holes in the knees or are patched. There’s even that one pair he split the seat out of. Dean laughs when he pops open Sam’s sock drawer and finds everything organized in rows of twos. Underwear and socks matching and paired together in neat little bundles.

Sam tells him to shut up and slams the drawer on his fingertips, waits until his brother isn’t looking and stuffs them into his bag.

Sputnik finds a navy blue hand towel in the bathroom and drags it out, decides that it’s hers and won’t let go, even when Dean picks her up and Sam starts pulling.

“Your dog is weird, Dean.”

“She’s not my—Just shut up.”

They pull over at a rest stop about an hour later and Dean climbs out of the car and starts toward the bathrooms. Sam calls his name but he doesn’t hear it. All he hears is the barking. Low, loud, _vicious_ barking. His heart is suddenly going a mile a minute and the Color of the world is bright—It hurts. Spears through his head like it means to cleave him in two—

Dean chokes and slaps a hand to his head, staring around frantically—It’s really this Grace-Vision thing or whatever it is, that makes it worse, because the black lab on the walking path is wreathed in a dark blue light and Dean’s brain immediately interoperates it as something else entirely, which sets off a chain reaction of sorts and the next thing he knows the world is snarling and barking and brightness and Sam shouting;

“What— _Jesus!_ SPUTNIK, NO!”

Dean can see a woman, kind of a sky blue color, pulling the lab’s lead. The Lab seems almost amused, offers a few low rumbling ‘wuf’s almost like laughter while his owner is urging him toward her dinky little Focus. And Dean can see Sam, all red with smears of pink and tinged in black holding onto Sputnik’s lead while she jumps and barks and snarls with wide wild brown eyes and bared sharp little teeth. She’s scary looking, hackles up and pulling with all her might trying to get at the lab, drool foaming at the corners of her mouth. She is bright-BRIGHT gold, a wide beaming corona around her tiny little frame, all of it arched out and back toward himself and Sam.

She… She’s protecting them from what she had assumed was a threat by Dean’s reaction.

As soon as the lab is shut away in the Focus and the woman has pulled out of her parking space Sputnik goes quiet, still straining at the end of her lead, panting and snorting and sneezing, but she’s not barking—not snarling. By the time the car is at the end of the lot she’s calm again, breathing heavily and still kind of foamy around her mouth but the light around her has diminished, eased back to a soft glow the color of honey.

Sam shoves a hand through his hair and lets out a low, disturbed chuckle, then turns to his brother; “You alright?”

He nods, pushes himself up from where he’s huddled himself against the car’s door mutters that he has to piss and retreats to the bathroom, splashes water on his face and tries not to vomit.

When he comes out there’s a Rottweiler on the end of a short chain and a man in a bomber jacket. He’s laughing at something Sam has said and Sputnik seems completely unaffected by the larger dog. They’re sniffing at one another but aren’t close enough for the formal dog Nose-To-Ass greeting.

Dean hangs back warily feels kind of ridiculous but swallows past the knot in his throat and approaches. The Rottweiler is red, similar to Sam, but not quite the same color. The dog’s owner is kind of a pear green color and where the arches of his and the dog’s meet is kind of brown. But a warm chocolate kind of brown, not the sick rotting color of P.T. Sandover’s ghost.

Sputnik turns to look at him with her head cocked to the side, gives her tail a wag and kind of prances toward him. He crouches down in front of her and numbly pats her head, like he would pat the engine of a car to see if it was hot. Gingerly, afraid he might pull his fingers back bloody and blistered.

Dean doesn’t even realize Sam’s gone quiet until he’s got his fingers pushed into the dog’s fur and is scratching lightly with his nails.

It’s not by any means acceptance, but he is trying. He’s acknowledging the dog and that she isn’t going to rip his face off even if it is obvious from her actions earlier, that she’s fully capable of tearing into someone, or something—and willing to do so if it’s called for.

Sam hands over the end of the lead and ambles off toward the bathrooms himself. Dean doesn’t know why he didn’t just take the dog with him, she’s wearing her vest nobody would say anything, but instead he just kind of stands there stiffly holding the strap and watching the Rottweiler and his owner from the corner of his eye as they climb back into the man’s big rig and settle in for a break.

Sam comes back out a minute or two later rubbing his hands dry on the thighs of his pants. He’s only in a thin white t-shirt now, probably threw away that ugly yellow polo and Dean snorts in amusement when Sam hunches his shoulders and wraps his arms around himself.

“Dude… We look like a gay couple.”

Sam narrows his eyes; “What do you mean?”

Dean holds his arms out indicating that horrible tracksuit he was still wearing, the dog, the Prius and Sam’s current attire. Khakis and a too-tight white shirt.

Sam looked down at himself, jaw tight; “I hate you.”

0-0-0

Dean chances a hamburger without onions when they stop four hours later for dinner and to let the dog pee behind the restaurant’s dumpster. The manager gives her a funny look but nothing is said. Dean is tired of all the bland healthy food he’s been forced to eat for the past two months and even if he the tomato gives him heartburn bad enough to send him to his knees, he wants a burger goddammit.

They eat in the car, simply because Dean doesn’t like how everybody’s staring at him and the dog, that and he doesn’t really give a shit if he spills coke and mustard all over the seat because this piece of crap isn’t his baby.

Sam feeds the dog chicken nuggets and French fries.

Dean tries to eat. Gets through half the burger and most of the fries and… well. That’s about it. He doesn’t want Sam to know but it’s kind of hard to miss when he’s sitting right there. He feels hungry, yes. Surprisingly, he can admit he was actually hungry when they started, but he… he can’t quite make himself finish it. He doesn’t even know why he just— can’t. He tries to choke the rest of it down but the feeling of it in his mouth is too much and he spits it back into a napkin to keep from throwing up.

“Hey,” Sam’s voice is low, level; “It’s fine. You tried.”

He exhales, lets his eyes fall shut in relief, passes the rest of the burger back to the dog and goes for the milkshake Sam hands him. Ice cream, yeah, that’s nice. Dean can handle ice cream, the texture is smooth and cold, not—not chunky and warm and stringy like m-meat.

Sam turns on the radio and grins broadly when he realizes every station programmed in isn’t at all what he’s used to Dean listening to. NPR, Today’s Pop One-Hundred, Nineties Nostalgia, Ladies of New Age.

Dean kind of wants to hit him.

But the smell hits Dean instead.

“Uhg—Man, that’s nasty! I’m _eating!”_ Dean rolls his lip up and turns to crack a window.

“It wasn’t me!” Sam scowls and puts his own down too. It takes a minute but Sam slowly turns and stares into the back seat; “Dude… I think your dog is lactose intolerant.”

“Oh, for fuck sake.”

They have to stop twice to let the dog Go and Dean vows never—NEVER to let her have greasy human food again.

“Christ that’s nasty.”

Sam remains behind the wheel laughing quietly into his palm.

There’s still snow on the ground in Sioux Falls when they arrive sometime after five AM. Bobby’s just woken up, has coffee but hasn’t thought about breakfast yet. He’s still just in his socks and yawns greatly when he opens the door for them. “What the hell is that?” He motions to the dog when Dean steps aside for her to jump out of the car.

“No need to reschedule that scan. Angels confirmed it,” Dean rubs his face; “How long’ll it take to doctor up those medical files?”

“A few days, but that still don’t tell me what _that_ is,” He points down at the dog with his nose wrinkled up.

“Seizure Alert Dog,” Sam provides, “I looked it up online, it’s legit.”

Bobby looks unconvinced; “That ain’t no dog. That’s a _rat!”_

Sputnik looked up at him with her lower tooth over her lip and made a low ‘wuf’ sound in her throat, as if to challenge him.

“From what I can tell,” Sam is pulling the bike out of the back of the car; “She’s only about seven months old,” He gets the bike’s wheels in the dirt and pushes it over to lean against the side of the house, then goes back for the essentials, his laptop and the food he’d taken from Dean Smith’s fridge.

Dean ducks back into the car long enough to grab the pillow he’d taken and stuffed his medication into, the briefcase with the-HIS laptop— He feels inordinately proud of that— and the dog’s cushion.

Sputnik has already climbed the steps and is sniffing around the base of the door and Bobby’s ankles.

“He ain’t gonna piss on me, is he?”

“SHE!” Sam calls from behind his armload.

“Oh, well that’s just great. Is she fixed?”

“Dunno,” Dean eases up the steps himself and opens the door. The dog runs in excitedly, nose to the ground and starts running back and forth sniffing things, tail wagging.

“The rat got a name?”

“Sputnik,” It’s weird when they say things together, Dean doesn’t like it, gives Sam a sour look and drops his arm load onto the couch. He looks around for an empty corner and tosses the dog’s cushion into it. A moment later she comes prancing in dragging the towel she’d stolen from Sam Wesson’s apartment, paws at Dean’s leg where he’s standing and hunches down, butt in the air tail wagging, making low, playful growling noises. She’s glowing brightly again, reaching upward at him eagerly.

Dean steps away from her nervously, fishes his medication out of the pillow case and calls over his shoulder. “You know anything about medicine, Bobby?”

“Not much. Why?”

He tosses a bottle of vitamins toward the older man; “I wanna know what the hell that is… I’ve been chokin’ this stuff down for a month because Zechariah scrambled my brain and I don’t even know what it is.”

Bobby nods and goes toward the kitchen. Dean’s noticed the older man keeps most of the books dealing with herbs in the kitchen, maybe it’s so he’ll always know where they are. Sam is stuffing the food he’d taken into the fridge, has the lid off the black bean salsa and is licking some off his fingertip.

“What the hell is this?” Bobby lifts the bag of arugula out of the crisper and stares at it.

“It’s lettuce,” Sam says earnestly.

Bobby wrinkles his nose; “Boy if you’re tryin’ to sneak marijuana into my house you gotta come up with a better—“

Sam sighs and unseals the bag, pulls out a few leaves and shakes them in the older man’s face; “Does this look like marijuana to you? It’s a type of lettuce.”

Bobby takes one of the leaves and flattens it out between his fingers, grumbles something under his breath, tosses the leaf into the sink and walks away, almost like he’s disappointed.

Dean chuckles from the couch.

It has to be something left over from Smith because Dean’s got the pills in his hand, halfway to his mouth before he even realizes it. He stops himself, stares at the colorful capsules then down at the dog still trying to entice him into playing tug-of-war with her towel.

Sam walks over a moment later with the salsa and the bag of chips. He stares at the pills over Dean’s shoulder then picks up the bottles and reads the labels, opens them when Dean hands a few back and watches his brother press the remaining capsules between his lips, like teeth or something. Dean shuffles over and picks up one of Bobby’s bottles of holy water and takes a swig.

Sputnik wines and paws at his ankle again.

Sam blinks at her then at his brother; “Dude… I think she wants to play.”

Dean looks at him from under heavy lids; “I’m tired… You do it.”

Sam shifts uncomfortably on his feet; “She’s your dog, don’t you want to?”

Dean rakes a hand over his head and lets out a pent up breath; “The only reason she’s here is because she can tell me before my head explodes. I’m not tryin’ to be a dick or anything, but I—can’t, alright?”

“You did just fine with her in Cincinnati.”

“That wasn’t ME, Sam… I didn’t—I didn’t remember Stuff that the real Me does, alright? She OK for a mini-dog… But I just CAN’T. Not now… Not—“ He knocked his fist against his chest and looked down at her warily when she tried to pat his foot with her paw again.

Sam looked almost as heartbroken as she did, watched Dean go to the steps with Sputnik trailing him. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked up at him with her tail in the air and her ears perked up but when she realized he wasn’t coming back down she seemed to physically droop. She laid down with her head on her paws and stared after him for a long while.

Bobby peered up after Dean, then looked down at the dog. “Now that’s just pathetic,” He lets out an exasperated sigh and turns toward the kitchen; “Come on, mutt, let’s see if we can find you a bowl or somethin’.”

0-0-0

It’s the same dream, Dean has had it before. Trapped beneath Alastair on a bed of razor wire—fucked into it until pieces of himself are carved away—like a cheese grater or something. He can feel it.

Alastair hadn’t done it often, used Cas’s face. But when he did it always seemed to hurt more. Weird, because most of the pain of it was that his body reacted to it—ENJOYED it. It’s happened now more than a dozen times since he came back. That Nightmare… Waking up with a hand shoved down his shorts and everything hotwetsticky. Sometimes he just wants to cut it off so he doesn’t have to worry about waking up like that ever again.

Sick… He knows.

But it doesn’t stop the urge to make sure it never happens again.

It’s the same dream, Dean knows it is, because Cas’s face is hovering over him in the darkness. A pressure INSIDE him—a hand clamped hard over his shoulder and…

Something—something’s different. There is a weird light, a haze like the glow of a city on low hanging clouds seen from a distance.

There’s something different about his face. Something under it that never was in Hell—there’s something there but Dean can’t quite make it out.

Cas’s head tilts slowly, warily to the side, lips parting—Dean can see his breath, like smoke or something, a bizarre illumination in the color of his eyes, something flickers like static cling in the air behind him. Little lightning bolts jolting between two invisible points.

Everything is moving so slowly, so fluid—

There is HEAT searing into Dean’s flesh, through soft thread like edges, melting like superglue and—

Cas looks confused, frightened—then his eyes open wide—BRIGHT it’s like a wind builds from within him, a storm, a fucking hurricane or a blast wave and everything is blown away in a surge of brightness—

Dean wakes up with a gasp, his chest aches—his head hurts and the room is too hazy with late afternoon sun, twinkling against the ceiling, reflected off old cracked windshields in the yard.

He can hear a dog barking.

Sam is laughing.

Dean lays there for a few minutes breathing deeply, feels his heart begin to race in trepidation, skims a hand down his chest under the blanket, over his stomach and hesitantly prods around the front of his boxers. He’s whole, there is no mess, just what feels like your typical lazy half interest from sleep.

He pulls his hand back quickly, breathes out and in a few times to keep himself under control and levers up into a sitting position. He rubs his eyes on his wrist and blinks around dazedly, a weird tingle under his skin.

Sam’s laughing intensifies; “GO GET IT!”

The bedroom door is cracked open and Dean can hear Bobby puttering around down stairs, he climbs to his feet, shuffles over to the plastic covered window and peers out around it. He can see Sam’s back, he’s facing down an alleyway between cars with a big stupid grin on his face. Lets out a whoop and the next second there’s Sputnik, tennis ball between her teeth jumping and running in circles around him. Her feet are covered in mud and there’s a streak of it down her chest and her chin.

Sam bends down and swipes at the ball but she bounces away, then forward again, tail wagging so fast her back end is moving with it. Sam finally gets hold of the ball and for a few seconds they ‘fight’ over it. Dean can’t really hear it but he imagines the dog growling playfully, shaking her head a little trying to get Sam’s fingers off the ball.

Sam growls back, loudly—half laughing and she releases, bounces back and starts prancing in counterclockwise circles.

Sam cocks his arm back and throws the ball and the dog is gone—ZOOM like a fucking fighter jet! Little legs pumping so fast she doesn’t even seem to touch the ground.

Sam leans forward, hands on his thighs and laughs. Long and loud and… and happy.

He feels-HEARS- the angel before he sees him. A tingle in his skin and a low ringing in his ears.

Dean doesn’t turn away from the window but he can see Castiel in his periphery. Shoulders slumped, still so pale and tired looking.

“Hello, Dean.”

He exhales, “What do you want?”

“I have been told you will continue Hunting.”

Dean snorted, glances at him, then back to Sam. Does he want that? After Sandover, after getting himself back… Does he want to go out there again? Does he WANT to expose himself to demons and monsters again and risk it? Does he want to put himself out there and wait for the angels to come back and say he’s ‘Needed’ again? He exhales and rubs a hand through his hair; “You heard wrong.”

“Has the dog not proven beneficial?”

He sighs and leans his head against the window casing. He’s still upset over the fact of NEEDING the dog and that if it hadn’t been for the angels he would still be whole, still be himself… If it weren’t for Castiel he would still be in Hell. It’s possible he would be a demon by now, trying to find a way out. “Where’d you get her anyway?”

“Texas. Her mother was a show dog. She was the last in her litter.”

“You brought me a show pup? Couldn’t you have picked… I don’t know, a beagle or something? I’d have been OK with a beagle. At least they look like dogs not fashion accessories.”

Castiel squints at him; “She has a pure soul, loyal and intelligent. She is kind, territorial and confident she will be victorious when pitting herself against things exponentially larger and stronger than her… Traits I’ve recently come to respect in all of my father’s creations.”

Dean snorts; “Yeah, I saw her try to go up against a lab earlier, like she wanted to tear him a new one. I don’t think she gets that she’s _little_ , yanno?”

Castiel is looking at him when he turns. His head is tilted just a little and his mouth is just eversoslightly curled up at one corner.

Dean wrinkled his nose. “What?”

“Small creatures are among God’s fiercest.”

Dean snorted; “Tell that to ants.”

“Siafu Ants are some of the most vicious in the world… When their colonies march anything that tries to oppose them is killed and eaten to the bones. Bulldog Ants are responsible for many deaths in Australia every year and Bullet Ants release a neurotoxin in their sting that causes excruciating pain for upwards of twenty-four hours and can be lethal if one is stung in large numbers.”

Dean turns slowly and stares at him with wide frightened eyes; “You shittin’ me?”

“Why would I—“

“And now I’m afraid of ants…” Dean turns and looks back out the window at his brother. Sputnik has dropped at Sam’s heel, is lying on her belly panting visibly but her tail is still wagging, she’s shining so brightly, her color arched toward and meshing with Sam’s into something bright and shining like metal in the center.

“Dean.” 

The angel’s hand lowers hesitantly, a slight all too human weight against Dean’s elbow and he shrugs from under it, arms crossing defensively.  He takes a deliberate step away and leans his head against the wall, swallows past the knot in his throat. He can’t even look at Castiel, not really. He keeps seeing that look on his face from the dream, the shock—Amazement before everything had dissolved.

There’s a feeling, like a chill up his spine across his shoulders. It’s like an itch at the back of his head, right where his spine connects with his brain. A tingle that reaches out toward his ears and—

Murmurs. Soft, quiet. Like whispers through hotel walls. Music from another room.

It’s brief and frightening and Dean turns quickly, stares at the angel with wide eyes, back pressed against the wall.

Castiel’s hands—the ones usually lined up with those of his vessel are reaching out, fingers lifted and hovering as if they’d pulled away quickly. His face is slightly pinched and his vessel’s eyes are intent. The color of him is so intense but dims when he steps close, hidden behind the noncolor of Dean’s. It’s weird… Zechariah’s had seemed to push forward and try to suffocate him in Cincinnati, as had Uriel’s back in Cheyenne.

Dean can’t move, is afraid to because this seems so alien, he just stands there with his breath held, heart in his throat and watches as those hands move in again, slowly, carefully.

It’s like a thousand voices all at once, chattering softly. Cafeteria white noise, laughter and movement and singing—

“Cas—” He swallows, “Castiel, what is that?” His lips curl up nervously and his hands tighten in the extra fabric of his sweats. “What’re you doin to me?”

He doesn’t say anything, steps close enough that Dean can feel the heat of his vessel’s body all along his front and he’s afraid— not just because something OTHER is touching him, but afraid he’s dreaming and the angel’s face will twist, those denim blue eyes will snap to white and— _Chatteringvoices flashesoflight movementbehindhiseyes urgencycuriosity ouvir heyra mig kuulla we painneedsadness sentire fearloneliness слышать меня desperation čuti mene hall én_ _a_ _k_ _o_ _ὐ_ _w_ _e_ _m_ _ἐ_ _n helplessness HØRE MEG canyouhearmedean losspainrealizationHOPE canyouhearme?_ —

**Dean… can you hear me?**

His knees give out, but Castiel’s vessel’s arms come up, catch his elbows and support him.

Dean grips back, is shaking and a sick twisting pain is building behind his eyes.

“Dean?”

Sam’s voice—

“Hey, Dean?”

Castiel is suddenly gone and Dean slides down the wall, hits in the floor with his knees to his chest just as the door opens and Sam steps in, looks at him and his expression is suddenly serious; “Hey, you OK?” He approaches cautiously, crouches down and cups a hand to the back of Dean’s neck, supporting his head; “What happened, are you alrght?”

He pushes Sam back with a nod, “Dizzy… Just dizzy,” Bows his head between his knees and breathes deeply.

“What happened?”

His mouth opens and closes and he feels himself speaking even if he hadn’t intended to; “I need to eat… Slept too long.”

Sam nods; “Okay, yeah. Yeah, we can do that. Come on.”

0-0-0

Dean eats… and eats… and eats. He feels like a bottomless pit. It—it just—it just tastes so GOOD.

Bobby stares at him uneasily from in front of the stove. “If I’d known it wouldn’t make you sick I’dve made grilled cheese earlier.”

Sam’s taken a seat across the table from him. Has his chin propped on his folded arms and a little pleased grin on his face. “I take it you’re feeling better?”

Dean doesn’t answer, just lifts his eyes to Sam’s with a sneer and keeps eating.

Sam rubs his eye and yawns, shifts his head against his arms until most of his face is hidden and doesn’t open his eyes again.

“You not sleep at all?” Dean mumbles and reaches for the last sandwich; “You were bustin’ my balls all the way here because you had to drive the whole time, yet you didn’t sleep a wink.”

Bobby answers, drops a few more sandwiches onto Dean’s plate and turns off the stove; “He found a hunt’s why… I made him take that mutt of yours out hopin’ she’d exhaust him,” He nods toward the corner of the room; “Turns out he exhausted her.”

Dean leans to the side and peers around the edge of the door, notices how muddy Sputnik’s paws and stomach are then knocks Sam in the head with a spoon leftover from that disgusting caffine free instant coffee shit he was subjected to earlier.

Sam flinches and claps both hands over his head, gives Dean a wounded look; “Jeez, what was that for!”

Dean points with the spoon at the dog; “You messed her up, you get to wash her.”

Sam rubs his head; “She’s asleep—“

“And when she wakes up, you’re giving her a bath—“

“She’s your dog—“

“Who was clean and didn’t smell too bad when I went to sleep.”

Sam rolled his eyes and tucked his head back between his arms; “Fine.”

One of Bobby’s phones started ringing and the older man went to it.

Dean tapped his brother again with the spoon; “Case. Bobby said you had a case?”

He shoved Dean’s hands away quite violently and curled his forearms up around his head. Poor guy looked exhausted but too stubborn, or maybe even too tired to sleep. “Apartment building in Minneapolis. Tenants reported moaning, moved objects, scratching in the walls… one of them, a John Herbert, says he was choked in his sleep by an unseen force. There’s hospital records on my laptop, there are bruises shaped like hands around his neck and arms.”

“Could just be rough sex.”

“That’s what I thought… Until I got a look at the pictures.”

Dean took his plate of sandwiches with him and went to where Sam’s computer was sitting on the couch. He woke it up and opened the image previews, turned his head left and right and lifted his eyebrows; “Yeah, how many ghosts are you thinkin?”

The handprints are small, about the size of a child’s… And there are six distinct sets of them.

“I wasn’t sure yet, honestly. I figured I’d get your opinion before we took off.”  
Dean chomped into another sandwich. “Hmmm? What do you mean ‘WE’?”

Sam blinked at him slowly; “We, as in you and me. That’s how we do things, right?”

Dean pushed the computer back and closed the lid; “I’m not goin’.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I’m not goin’ out there.”

Sam exhaled and propped his jaw on his fist; “Why not?”

“I’m brain damaged, remember?”

“That didn’t stop you in Cincinnati.”

“I gotta finish the truck and—“

Sam exhaled and folded his hands together; “What’re you so scared of?”

Dean almost choked but managed to force it down; “I’m not scared.”

Sam snorted. “You can tell me, yanno. I’m not gonna think less of you…” He leaned forward a little in his seat, “I helped you to and from the toilet in Cheyenne for a week, remember? I’m not gonna think less of you.”

Dean glared.

“In fact… You’re down a few points. Might wanna start thinkin’ of a way to get those back,” His gaze was playful, mocking in a friendly way.

Dean gave him the finger and climbed to his feet, swatted his brother on the side of the head and deposited his empty plate in the sink; “You better give that dog a bath or she’s sleepin’ in your bed.”

“Are you coming?”

He doesn’ answer.

“De—Dean!” Sam rubbed his face tiredly on his folded arms and let out a defeated sigh; “That means no…”

0-0-0

Dean goes. Not because he wants to, or at least that’s what he says. He goes because there’s nothing better to do, he doesn’t want Sam getting himself killed and the parts he needs for his truck aren’t in the scrap yard.

Sam knows that’s most likely a bold faced lie because Bobby’s got just about everything… in triplicate, but at least Dean’s going, so Sam isn’t going to complain.

Dean spends forty-five minutes checking the Impala over to make sure the trip won’t damage her. He doesn’t say it—in fact he’d rather imply that he doesn’t trust Sam with her—but it’s about giving himself purpose, a reason to be needed when he feels so useless. Sam knows how to maintain a car, but Dean knows how to _care_ for one and that’s a big difference. So, it’s no surprise really when Sam gets the silent treatment all the way to the state line for demanding that Dean give him the keys.

“I don’t see why I can’t drive—“

“Tell me again how many medications you’re on that say ‘no driving or operating heavy machinery’ right in the warning label?”

“I am perfectly capable of driving—“

“Right, and what happens if you start convulsing behind the wheel?”

Dean rolled his eyes.

“You’d wreck and kill us.”

“That’s what the dog’s for, isn’t it? She tells us before it happens, we pull over and you take the wheel. Simple as that.”

“No, not simple as that,” Sam glances at him warningly; “Until the doctor clears you to drive—“

“I’m not going back to the doctor.”

“Uh—Yeah, you are,” Sam’s gaze leaves no room for argument, but Dean argues anyway.

“I’ve got the pills, I got the dog—What’s the big deal?”

“This is a very big deal, Dean. A very—very big deal… You do understand that Epilepsy isn’t something you get over, right? Not when it’s caused by an injury. It’s permanent… THIS is how it’s going to be from now on. You have the pills, we take Sputnik with us EVERYWHERE and you see a doctor every month for blood tests and if need be, an MRI or a CT scan. No negotiation. This is how it is…” He taps the wheel with the thickness of his hand, like he’s chopping through the discussion, “Your body chemistry changes, the dosage and type of medicine you’re on now may not necessarily work six months—or even six weeks from now—Did you not read the articles the doctor printed out for you?”

“No.”

Sam rolled his eyes; “Well, you need to… This is your life, Dean. I don’t want you putting yourself at risk because you’re too stubborn to listen to a freakin’ doctor.”

“So this means I’m never gonna be able to drive again?”

Sam exhales loudly; “No, it means you can’t drive until everything is under control and right now, it’s not.”

“It’s not?”

“No… Dude, you’ve had how many episodes since you got kidnapped by Zechariah?”

Dean shrugs, “I don’t know… a couple?”

“That’s another thing… You kept damned good track of things in Cincinnati. I looked at that log book, you had everything written down. Made note of each one, how long it lasted, what happened during, what might have triggered it… You should keep that up.”

“Why?”

“Because that can help you figure out what you need to stay away from.”

Dean rolled his eyes again and sought out the scars under his hair with brutal fingertips.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry… But if giving up driving for a couple months and putting up with a doctor means you don’t have to have episodes like that again… isn’t it worth it?”

Dean scratches his jaw with his middle finger and Sam rolls his eyes.

“You’re only doing that because you know I’m right.”

“Whatever… You try to douche up my baby again, Sam, I won’t be held responsible for what I do, understand?”

0-0-0

Cheap motels with their freakin’ bad heaters and ironing boards that smell like mildew and vomit, Christ— Sam shakes out his shirt and pulls it on.

“Sam?”

He grunts around a doughnut and picks up his slacks; “Wha?”

Dean jerked his head toward the dog; “Should she have an ID too?”

Sam, was half dressed in his fed suit, doughnut between his teeth, making long slow passes with an iron over the legs of his slacks. Dean was sitting on the edge of the bed quickly throwing a few stitches in the toe of one sock and eyeing Sputnik where she’d taken up residence under the hotel’s desk on her cushion. Sam had bought some kind of vaguely toothbrush shaped dog chewy and she’d been slowly working on it, had it held between her little front paws, gnawing happily.

Sam pulled the doughnut away from his mouth—chewedswallowed and made a low dull noise in the back of his throat; “Uhhh…”

Dean popped the thread and hid the needle back in the envelope; “I mean, dog cops have badges and stuff… Why wouldn’t dog FBI?”

“I—uh—I think she should, but I have no idea what kind,” Sam stuffed the rest of his doughnut between his teeth and sucked the sticky glaze from his fingertips before he continued with his slacks. “We’ll worry about it later, we can leave her in the car if we have to—“

“What if she pees on the seat?”

Sam exhaled at the ceiling; “Then I’ll clean it up.”

Dean turned his repaired sock right side out and pulled it on, wiggled his toes to check for comfort and grumbled as he put on his shoes; “She needs a bath too—“

“No, she doesn’t.”

“She smells like dog.”

“She IS a dog, Dean.”

“Dogs stink—“

“Then give her a bath!” Sam was flipped over his slacks and started on the other leg. “It’s not rocket science.”

“She hates it when I do that—“

“She hates it because you’re rough.”

“She wouldn’t hold still—“

“Because you were ROUGH… Jesus—just forget it. I’ll give her a bath tonight, happy?”

“Then spray her with somethin’ until then. She reeks—“

“Dean, you don’t put cologne on a dog.”

“They make dog cologne… right?”

Sam finished with his slacks and  shook them a little before he pulled them on and tossed  the dog’s vest and lead from the little bag of her things onto the bed beside his brother’s coat. She ran out and stood by the door prancing in counterclockwise circles in excitement. Whenever the vest and lead came out she got very excited, Sam thought it was a little bit adorable. “We should get her a collar too.”

Dean had his toothbrush in his mouth, he snorted around it and spat a gob of foam into the bathroom sink.

Dean finished with his teeth, knotted his tie and took the dog out into the grassy patch at the edge of the parking lot so she could do her business and kicked some leftover snow over it because the idea of bagging doggie poop was disgusting and they left quickly enough that he hoped nobody had noticed.

Sam came out of the room swinging on his blazer and took the keys he realized they weren’t in his pocket. Dean grumbled, bent and rubbed the dog’s paws and chest dry with a towel he’d taken to keeping in the rear passenger foot well just for this purpose.

Sputnik tried to lick him in the face and he dumped her on the seat and shut the door. “Disgusting,” He climbed in and shut the door, “If she pees in here I’m strapping her to the roof.”

“Yeah, sure,” Sam rolled his eyes.

0-0-0

It’s funny how much can change in two hours. Sam was pacing, phone held to his ear, tie skewed. “Come on, pick up—“

It rang two more times before there was an answer.

“Hello?” He didn’t sound very happy to be pulled away from whatever he was doing, probably sitting behind his desk reading some Japanese text and knitting a fucking sweater.

“Bobby.”

“Sam?”

“You’re not gonna believe this.”

“Try me.”

Sam slashed his tongue over the tips of his teeth; “We’re in trouble.”

“When ain’t you in trouble?” He sighed; “What happened this time.”

“Well, it—We’re not bugging out if that’s what you mean. It’s just—We don’t know what to do.”

“I take it it’s not a ghost?”

“What? Oh—oh, that… uh, we don’t know exactly. Something came up and we had to drop it for a while.”

“What came up?”

“I— Dean and I found something weird—and I mean WEIRD.”

Bobby’s chair creaked; “What is it?”

Sam didn’t know how to say it, so with a wince, he just started reading; “’Along a lonely California highway, a mysterious Woman in White lures men to their deaths… a terrifying phenomenon that may be Sam and Dean’s first clue to their father’s whereabouts.’”

Bobby doesn’t say anything, in the background he can hear Dean shouting; _‘Get back here you little—No—NO! DON’T YOU DARE—STAY OFF MY BED! Get your fuzzy wet ass OFF my BED!’_

“It gets better,” Sam ground his teeth and plugged his unoccupied ear so he could hear the older man; “There are twenty-five of them—twenty four novels and a set of short stories that was written but never published and every single one of them is exactly—and I do mean exactly—what happened.”

Bobby’s nose wrinkled “’The hell?”

“Bobby… I—This is weird even for us.”

“I’ll say. You found books about you and your brother?”

Sam made a sound in his throat and Bobby heard Dean shouting again to be heard; “It’s insane! I mean—Sam gimmeeth’phone—“

“What, wait—Dean!”

Bobby holds the phone away from his ear as Sam and Dean tussle over it, he’s kind of at their mercy at the moment so he exhales and waits for one of them to relent. Dean wins apparently, makes a dick move and says; _‘My head—Sam, watch my head!_ ’ then cackles and yanks the phone away;

“You still there, Bobby?”

“You girls done with your pillow fight?”

“Ha-ha… Look, these things—There’s parts in them… like—“ He clears his throat, lowers his voice and hisses it; “Sex parts… DETAILED sex parts.”

“Why the hell would you think I need to know that!” Bobby yanks off his apron and throws it onto the counter.

“There’s people READING them, Bobby—they write fan-fiction!”

“Fan-fiction? What’s—“

“You don’t wanna know—Just—you really do NOT wanna know… I’m not gonna be able to look up porn online again!”

Bobby felt his nose wrinkle up; “Again, why do I need to know that? They’re not even about me—“

Dean snorted and shoved the phone back to his brother; “Read—read him the part.”

“What part?” Sam sounded annoyed.

“THE PART!”

“Oh, uh—” Sam cleared his throat and spoke loudly; “’A lot more than that,’ Bobby said, pointing  purposefully to each mark on the map with one arthritic finger. ‘Each of these X’s is an abandoned frontier church—All mid nineteenth century. And all—‘”

“Alright, ALRIGHT! I get it… What the hell kinda shit you boys step in?”

“I don’t know… I got copies of all of them and—I’m… I don’t even know what to say.”

Bobby lifts up his hat and scratches at his head. Dean scoffs on the other end of the line and calls for the dog _‘Okay you, back in the bath,’_. Sam exhales and the sound of it rattles over the line. A few minutes later Bobby can tell the younger Winchester has stepped outside from the sound of traffic.

Sam speaks in a low tone; “I might need some help with this, Bobby.”

“What kind of help? There ain’t much I can do but ask around. I’m sure if another hunter had heard of these things they would have said something at least.”

“The circulation wasn’t very wide… It’s an underground following… Like fewer than a thousand copies.”

“Okay… You find the author?”

“One Carver Edlund… Dean kind of started ranting about it. Kept saying we should burn them.”

“You gonna?”

Sam didn’t say anything.

“This doesn’t sound good. I’ll do what I can but you—“

“There’s stuff in here, Bobby. I mean STUFF, with a capital ‘S’. It’s like whoever wrote these things was in our heads.”

“You mean like a psychic?”

Sam sat heavily on the bed and rubbed his face; “I’ve never met a psychic THIS detailed—Considering the publishing dates, the length of the books and copyright laws… These things had to have been fully written six months before they happened. At least.”

Bobby inhaled deeply and let it out; “So, what’re you thinkin?”

“I’m thinking we need to find this author and figure out what the hell he is.”

“Alright. I’ll do what I can on this end but—“

“I’m gonna read them.”

“What? Ain’t livin’ them bad enough?”

Sam exhaled slowly; “It’s not that… There are. I—There could be a hint of what happened to Dean in here, Bobby and I—“

“Sam, you KNOW what happened to Dean.”

“No, I mean—Something’s missing from these books, I read part of one already until Dean took it from me and it hinted at it, but it didn’t SAY it. Like it got edited out but—I think he’s trying to hide something from me that should be in here. Something big from how he’s acting.”

“You ever think he’s trying to keep it from you because it’s a bad thing?”

Sam rubbed his face; “I’ve got a chance to find out what’s going through his head—“

“If these books are legit you don’t got a right to go pokin’ around in your brother’s thoughts. There’s some things meant to be private. If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you.”

“Really?” Sam doesn’t sound convinced.

“Think of it this way. Do you want Dean poking around in your thoughts? Do you want him knowing everything in there about you? Cause if you read them, he’s got the right to read them too.”

Sam’s chest felt tight. “What if what he’s hiding could hurt him? You’ve seen how he’s been acting since Cheyenne, Bobby. I—I can’t trust him with this, not really. Something’s up and he isn’t sharing… Maybe it has something to do with what happened in Hell, maybe it doesn’t. But when has anything that’s ever happened to us turned out good? I don’t want to invade his privacy, but if it has something to do with his health that he’s too embarrassed or to scared—or maybe he doesn’t even know about it—there’s a chance it’s in these books and—“

“You should burn ‘em. Get rid of them… You’re gonna read something Dean doesn’t want—“

“Bobby—“

“No! Dammit, boy, do you think that helping your brother means you got the right to go behind his back and sneak around in his thoughts? I know he’s hidin’ something just as well as you do, but going behind his back is like sayin’ we don’t trust him at all and how do you think Dean’ll react to that?”

Sam exhales, leans against the wall and presses his fingertips into his eyes.

“If you don’t trust him, Sam. You two got no business hunting together.”

And that was it, wasn’t it… Did Sam trust him with this? Did he trust Dean enough not to push? The answers were probably right there, black ink on white pages. No bias, just simple truth. And the questions burned in Sam’s brain like matchsticks—

_How badly do I want to know what happened? How much trust can I put into him when it’s obvious that he’s never going to tell me?_

_Should I trust him with this, or not?_

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	19. Bullet To The Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you find mistakes let me know i'll fix them. my friend Rachel edited these chapters for me because I was too sick to and I only have spotty internet right now so I just wanted to get them out to you asap.

0-0-0

The publisher answered her door with a smile and a moment of silence as she looked them up and down. They hadn’t bothered to change back into their suits after the fiasco at the comic shop and the drive out. They were lucky really, that the woman worked out of her home.

She was a slight, flighty looking woman with eyebrows sculpted perpetually into an arch of surprise and a pinched kind of smile that made you think she was barely withholding a high pitched squeal. She looked down at Sputnik and back up to Dean’s face; “Can I help you?”

Sam smiled and drew her attention from the dog; “Hi, you’re Sera Siege, right?”

She nods, “Is there something I can help you with?”

Sam smiles again, it’s his flirty smile—Dean wants to turn his head and gag.

“My friend and I work for Literature Weekly. We’re doing an article and wondered if you would mind answering some questions about the work of Carver Edlund?”

The woman’s eyes light up; “You mean the Supernatural books?”

Sam’s mouth twitches but the smile pops right back up; “Yes. We’re highlighting underappreciated fiction this quarter… I tried calling before, but I—“

The woman rolls her eyes; “They’ve been working on the phone lines all week. It’s fine, come on in—“ She pauses door held halfway open and points at the dog; “I’m sorry but, would you mind leaving your pet outside?”

Dean blinks; “Pet? Lady—“

Sam holds up a hand, fingers loose palm tilted upward; “My friend has Epilepsy, she’s his Alert Dog… I promise you, she’s trained.”

“Oh!” Sera covers her mouth, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t think—“ Her eyes lock on the scars and Dean grinds his teeth, turns like he’s going to walk away but Sam catches his arm.

“Come in, come in—Sorry about that—“ Sera holds the door open and motions them into the foyer.

Dean puts on a transparent smile and steps in kind of hopes Sputnik leaves a puddle under the woman’s sofa, but he keeps the lead wrapped around his hand, stands at Sam’s side with his shoulders squared and his other hand shoved in his pocket fingering his pocketknife.

Sam and Sera talk, she shows them into her office—She’s got fucking posters of the books on her walls and Dean stares at them with an expression of concentrated nausea on his face.

“If we got a little bit of good press, then maybe we could start publishing again!”

“No! No-no, God no!” Dean doesn’t even realize he’s talking until Sam knocks him in the ribs with an elbow. “I mean—uh—why would you wanna do that? Yanno? It’s such a—complete series… What with Dean going to hell and all.”

Sam can hear his brother’s teeth popping as he grits them through a smile.

Sera practically melts; “Oh, my God! That was one of my favorite ones!”

Sam blinks in surprise, stares at a spastic little twitch in the corner of Dean’s right eye and glances down to Sputnik because he’s pretty sure his brother’s blood pressure is rising by the second.

“Dean was so… Strong and sad and brave. And Sam—I mean, the best parts are when they cry.”

Dean’s still smiling but Sam thinks it’s only because he’s a little too freaked out to do anything else.

Sputnik has laid down at Dean’s heel and is licking her paw with slow deliberate swipes of her tongue—Sam almost expects her to wipe it over her face like a cat. He turns back to Sera and kind of just stands there letting her words wash over him, thinking that she must be kind of crazy to find all of this agony he and his brother have gone through entertaining.

Sera turns, sounds like she’s about to burst into tears; “If only real men were so open and in touch with their feelings.”

“Real men?”

“Uh— I mean, no offence. How often do you cry like that?”

Dean looks insulted; “Well, right now I’m crying on the inside.”

Sam’s eyebrows pop to his hairline and he nods in agreement.

Sera’s head tilts in the opposite direction and her hands prop onto her hips; “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Lady, this whole thing is funny,” And there he goes.

Sam kind of wants to pull his brother away, but it’s too late now.

“How do I know you two are legit, hm?” She circles her desk and sits down, arms crossed over her chest defensively.

“Oh, trust me. We’re legit,” Dean’s smiling uncomfortably again.

“Well I don’t want any smart-ass article making fun of my boys.”

Sam reaches out into dead air and shakes his fingers, like he’s smudging some line that’s been drawn in the sand between them; “No! Nonono, Never. We are—“ He swallows and meets Dean’s eyes purposefully before he turns back to Sera; “We are actually, um— big fans.”

The woman doesn’t look convinced; “You’ve read the books.”

“Cover to cover.”

Her left eyebrow cocks up challengingly; “What’s the year and model of the car?”

“Nineteen-sixty-seven Chevy Impala.”

“What’s May Second?”

“That’s m—Sam’s birthday.”

Dean chimes in with his own, scuffs his boot against the rug and looks down at the dog where she’s taken up residence between him and his brother, head tilted up and staring at him with her lower tooth over her lip.

“Sam’s score on the LSAT?”

Dean looks at his brother from the corner of his eye, nervous—

“One… seventy-four?”

“Dean’s favorite song?”

Smug… Oh, yes. Sam knew that expression well. Stepped back a little and stared at his brother. Smiled inwardly and glanced at his feet to center himself before he met Julie’s eyes again.

“It’s a tie. Between Zep’s ‘Ramble on’ and ‘Traveling Riverside Blues’.”

Sera remains emotionless for all of three seconds, then she smiles again, kind of pinched and folds her hands on the desk before her; “Okay. Okay, what do you wanna know?”

Sam gets right to the point; “What’s Carver Edlund’s real name?”

Her face falls, eyes widening in panic; “Oh, no. No, sorry. I can’t do that.”

“We just wanna talk to him. Yanno? Get the Supernatural story in his own words.”

She shakes her head; “He’s very private. Just like Salinger.” 

Dean gives his brother a sideways look. They’re running out of options here. If this lady doesn’t give up the name they’ve got nowhere else to go unless they break into her files.

Sam’s mouth twitches and he shifts uncomfortably on his feet; “Please,” He inhales, lets it out and his shoulders seem to deflate; “Like I said… We’re—“ He clears his throat, nudges Dean with his elbow again, “—Big—“ and starts unbuttoning his shirt pulls it aside to expose the tattoo above his heart; “—Big fans.”

They leave with the information less than five minutes later and Dean gives a visible—dramatic shudder when he climbs into the car, doesn’t even try to put the dog in the back, just lets her ride in the front between his feet with her head on his shin. 

“It’s on her ass, Sam… She has an anti-possession sigil tattooed on her ASS.”

Sam’s mouth flaps for a few seconds as he pulls back onto the street; “It—Well, it doesn’t exactly HAVE to be on the chest, so I guess—“

“I could have gone my whole life without seeing that. REALLY.”

“What’s with that, anyway? You used to look at women’s asses all the time.”

“Shut up.”

Sam’s mouth compresses. “I mean… Are you just not into sex anymore, or—“

“Sam—“

“—are you having…” He waves a hand and tries to get the words out; “Problems—“

“For the love of god, Sam. Shut. Up!”

He inhales deeply and shakes his head; “I’m just trying to have a conversation—“

“About my sex life!” He sounds scandalized.

“Well, considering the fact you used to rub my face in it—Used to make me sleep in the freakin’ car so you could do it—“

“I’ve had sex, Sam. You remember Jamie? Five times, Man. FIVE TIMES!” He stared out the window with his shoulders hunched.

Sam inhaled and let it out in a whoosh, didn’t bother bringing it up again. It wasn’t about Dean and sex anyway. He just wanted his brother to talk, to tell him what was hanging over his head so heavily and if there was a possibility of it falling and crushing them both.

0-0-0

Chuck Shurley lived in the middle of suburbia in a house that looked like it hadn’t seen a paintbrush or a pressure washer in more than a decade. There was a motorcycle parked between the tree and the front steps, it looked like it hadn’t been touched in a while and the leather of the seat was cracked in a few places. The grass was too tall, wilted and browned by the snow and discarded candy wrappers were still littering his yard from Halloween.

Dean climbed out of the car and waited for the dog to jump out, tried to steer her around the slush and muck on the edge of the road and got her lead wrapped around his fist. “Yeah, this isn’t creepy at all.”

Sam snorted and shoved his hands into his pockets, stared up at the house with his eyebrows lifted; “Fifty bucks says he’s a crazy fat guy with too many cats.”

Dean pointed as he circled around the front of the car; “You’re on.”

The porch steps groaned as they made their way up and Sputnik pulled on her lead—didn’t seem to want to advance any further than the walk. Dean pulled a little harder until her vest was bunching the extra skin around her neck and face up and she looked more like a Shar Pei than a corgi.

“Sput…” Dean clenched his teeth and marched back down the steps, bent and picked her up, held her out from his body because her paws were wet and tilted his head back to keep from being licked in the mouth; “Yeah, there’s no way you were trained. Castiel is a big winged liar.”

Sam chuckled from where he’d stopped by the door and watched as Dean punched the doorbell with a rigid finger.

It takes a moment and Dean almost punches it again but Sputnik wriggles in his arms and he almost drops her, shuffles her around until she’s under his arm like a frickin football and then the door opens.

Chuck Shurley is a scrawny guy with an unkempt beard, messy half combed hair and knobby knees. He answers the door in a tattered gray and black robe, his underwear and an undershirt with what looks like a spaghetti-O stain on the front. He squints at them and exhales a cloud of whiskey scented breath into the chilled air, left eyebrow cocked up in a way that denied any wrongdoing with his his obvious drunkenness and undress.

Sam owes Dean fifty bucks.

“You Chuck Shurley?”

He blinks dazedly, squints at them a little more. “Who wants to know?”

Sam clears his throat; “The Chuck Shurley that wrote the Supernatural books?”

The man squints harder, looks almost constipated; “Maybe, why?”

Sputnik makes a low woofing sound in her throat at him and wags her tail excitedly.

Chuck stares at her with his head slowly tilting to the side. Fingers tightening where he’s still gripping the door for support.

“I’m Dean, this is Sam… The Sam and Dean you’ve been writing about.”

Chuck’s shoulders sag and he puts on a fake smile, nods and leans a little harder on the door; “Yeah,” And he starts to close the door in their faces.

Sam sticks his boot in it but the guy doesn’t realize for a few seconds, then swings it open and stands there scowling at them with his robe gaping open; “Look, I appreciate your enthusiasm— Really, I do. It’s always nice to hear from the fans. But for your own good, I strongly suggest you get a life,” and he tries to shut the door again.

Dean’s teeth pop and he shoves the dog into Sam’s arms and strongarms the door open again; “Okay, I tried to be nice… We have a life. It’s shitty most of the time, but it’s OUR life and YOU have been using it to write your little books,” He pushes into the house, dragging Sam and Sputnik in with him because the lead is still wrapped around his wrist.

Chuck stumbles back, tries to put doorways between them but it’s kind of hard to do when he’s mostly drunk in his underwear and slippers. He backs into the hall table and nearly knocks over a few photos of his mother—spins to catch them and put them upright and continues backing up with his hands out plaintively; “Wait a minute! Now—Guys, really. This isn’t funny anymore—“

“Damned straight it’s not funny,” Dean’s shoulders are tense and his eyes are darting around, looking for an altar or something, any sign of witchcraft or spell work, or demonic presence, but all he’s getting is a smell like old booze and latkes mixed with the lingering faded scent of Panama Red.

Sam still has the dog hugged to his chest with one arm, she’s grunting uncomfortably, trying to flail out of his grasp but Sam has a steady hold on her, big hand against her chest and her stubby little legs are still too small to break his grip; “Look, we just wanna know how you’re doing it,” Sam tries to smile calmly, tries to play the good cop because Dean obviously wants to clean the guy’s clock.

Chuck’s put his tatty couch between them and looks ready to dart into the other room any second; “I’m not doing anything!”

“You a hunter?”

“What?” Chuck shakes his head; “No! I’m a writer!”

Dean growls and feints to the left then tries to lunge over the couch. “Then how the hell do you know so much about demons and tulpas and changelings?”

Chuck scurries back, grabs up a stapler from his cluttered diningroom table and holds it out like a weapon with both hands; “Is this some kind of _Misery_ thing? Ah, God! It is! It’s a _Misery_ thing isn’t it!” He’s shaking visibly.

Dean blinks at him stupidly; “It’s not a _Misery_ thing! We are NOT fans,” Dean snatches the stapler away and Chuck bounces back with a whimpering little cry and grabs an empty bottle of some weird kind of wine off the table and holds the neck, gets himself closer to the fireplace where he has a chance of breaking it for a weapon.

“Then what do you want!” He brandishes the bottle threateningly at them.

Sam steps forward with one hand up in a reassuring manner. He lowers Sputnik to the carpet, stands up slowly and holds out his arms to show the man he’s not carrying a weapon and has no intention of letting Dean pummel him. “I’m Sam and that’s Dean.”

Chuck is stuttering now, his voice has gone high and nasal; “Sam and Dean are fictional characters! I made them up! They’re not real!”

Sputnik lunges forward on the end of her lead snarling again, tail wagging excitedly. It’s less that she’s trying to protect them and more that she’s just following their lead. Dean feels somehow satisfied when Chuck squeals and jumps up onto a cluttered chair in the corner; “CALL IT OFF! CALL IT OFF!”

“Now why would I wanna do that!”

“Dean!” Sam’s eyebrows are up in disbelief.

“You set her down!” He reels in the lead and gets the dog under the front legs, sticks her under his arm like a football again and is amused by how she keeps barking and snarling and wagging her tail, happy to scare the shit out of the guy.

Sam pushes his hair back from his face and holds his hands out, one toward Chuck, one toward his brother; “You want proof?”

“Proof?” Chuck laughed, high and nervous; “What the hell is this?”

“Just—just put on some pants and come outside for five minutes—that’s it. Five minutes and if we haven’t convinced you by then we’ll leave.”

Dean stares at him like he’s sprouted horns or something.

Chuck isn’t convinced, is still brandishing the bottle at them. “You think I’m some kinda _putz!”_

“Mr. Shurley… Please. Just listen for a—”

“No, YOU listen! Y-you barge into my house and threaten me with that—What the hell kinda dog is that anyway?” His eyes are wide, locked on her.

“She’s a corgi—“

Dean really hates it when he and Sam say things together. Really hates it.

Chuck’s hands have lowered, just a fraction and he’s staring at them more warily than frightened now. Slowly, carefully he climbs down off the chair and sidesteps toward his desk—snatches up a pair of glasses and shoves them onto his face. He blinks at them dumbly for a few minutes, lets the bottle sag to his side and blinks some more.

“Mr. Shurley?”

He holds up one finger, lips compressed and continues to blink.

Sputnik has finally gone quiet, is hanging there under Dean’s arm with her tongue lolling out, panting.

Chuck inhales deeply and lets it out; “Five minutes. Then I’m calling the cops.”

Sam’s shoulders sag in relief and he pushes his hair out of his face.

Chuck crosses his arms, ties his robe shut at his waist and pushes his feet into a pair of flipflops.  He follows them warily, casting glances left and right as they exit the house and head toward the Impala.

Sam exhales and fishes the keys out of his pocket, pops the trunk and stands to the side while Chuck stares in with his mouth hanging open.

Chuck looks somehow more nervous than he had previously; “A-are those real guns?”

Dean smiles; “Yup. This is real rock salt, these are real fake ID’s.”

Chuck shifts uncomfortably on his feet and his voice is going higher and higher by the second; “I gotta hand it to you guys… you really are my number one fans.”

Sputnik tilts her head up at him tooth-over-lip and Chuck stares down at her uneasily.

“Yeah… That-that’s awesome. So there’s—I think I’ve got some posters in the house—“ He turns and darts toward the door.

“Chuck, STOP.”

He stumbles, hands up, half flinched back, like maybe he was beat up a lot as a kid and is half expecting it now. Dean kinda does want to punch him, just for the principle of the thing. This guy’s been looking into their LIVES. He’s documented THINGS. This guy KNOWS THINGS about Dean that Dean doesn’t want anybody to know!

Chuck keeps his hands up as they approach; “Just, please. Don’t hurt me—“

“How much do you know?” Dean keeps a tight hold on the dog’s lead, keeps her at arm’s length because he plans to get right up in Chuck’s face and he doesn’t want Sputnik to bite him and possibly become infected by whatever he is.

Sam senses it, puts a hand on Dean’s chest and mutters; “Take it easy,” He turns to Chuck and lowers his voice because some woman next door is peering out the slats in her blinds; “What do you know about the angels? Or Lilith breaking seals?”

And Chuck’s eyes widen, “Wait a minute… How do YOU know about that? Have—Have you—Did you hack my computer?”

“The question is; how do you?” Dean says between his teeth.

It’s quick. Just a little flash of dull olive green around the man and a stab of pain behind Dean’s eyes—He puts his hand to his forehead and grinds his teeth, Sam glances at him, but back to Chuck when the man starts talking quickly.

“I know because I wrote it.”

“You kept writing?”

“Well—Yeah… Even after the publisher went bankrupt. But those books never came out… I told her that the short stories would gain a wider fan-base because of the whole Dean thing but—“

“What whole ‘Dean thing’?” Sam shifts forward and Dean puts a hand up to push him back, scowls severely at Chuck in a manner that says quite plainly;

_If you say anything I’ll rip out your tongue and break your fingers._

Chuck’s teeth clicked he shut his mouth so quickly, he flapped his robe open and closed compulsively and suddenly couldn’t stop staring at Dean. “Nothing… But—“ He turns back to Sam; “How do you guys know about the angels? Or the seals? None of that was published—Hell, I haven’t even told anybody. Not even my ex-wife and she seems to know when I have difficult bowel movements so—“ He chuckles nervously.

Sam exhales and shifts his feet against the walk. Sputnik squats in the dead grass to relieve herself.

Chuck continues to chuckle, like he’s trying not to sob; “Wat… waitwait. This is some kind of joke right? Did that—“ He jerks a thumb over his shoulder toward the neighbor’s house; “Did Phil put you up to this?”

Dean rubs a hand over his face. He’d been hoping this was some witch or weirdo-psychic-bullshit thing, but it’s starting to look like something else and the guy standing in front of them is just that… Some dumb guy. “Well, nice to meet ya. I’m Dean Winchester and this is my brother Sam.”

Sputnik makes a low ‘woof’ sound and Dean rolls his eyes and flicks his tongue over his bottom lip; “That’s Sputnik.”

Chuck’s staring. Mouth hanging open, chill bumps on his legs, robe open for all the world to see. He mutters something under his breath, “Last names were never in the books… How—I never told ANYBODY about that. I never even wrote it down.”

Sam shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and rolls his eyes toward Dean. “Well, sorry to tell you this but… You’ve been writing out our lives and—“

Chuck is staring at Dean again; “I thought you’d be… I don’t know… Bigger.”

“I’m big enough where it counts.”

Chuck makes a tittering noise in his throat but doesn’t smile, he looks a little too freaked out to smile. Instead he nods a little toward the dog; “So I guess you’re—“

“Pissed? Oh, you have no idea.”

Chuck nods once, turns and hurries back inside. He seems to ignore them, mumbles to himself as he scuttles around the room picking up and shaking bottles, dumping a mixture of wine, beer and different alcohols into a glass and throwing it back with a wrinkle of his nose. He turns—eyes closed tightly—and rubs his face. He peeks out through his fingers and makes a low off key giggling noise; “Oh, you’re still here… Not a hallucination.”

“Nope… Maybe if you laid off the ‘Red that wouldn’t be such a problem for you.”

Chuck makes that laughing-not-laughing noise again and staggers to his the chair he has set in his kitchen, drops into it and rubs his face; “Well, there’s only one other explanation… Obviously I’m a god.”

Sam snorts; “You’re not a god.”

“How else do you explain it? I write things and then they come to life. Yeah, no. I’m definitely a god. A cruel—CRUEL, capricious god.”

“Yeah, well no arguing with you there,” Dean leans against the doorframe and crosses his arms.

“The things I put you through? The physical beatings alone…”

“We’re still standing,” Sam butts in, puts himself between Dean and Chuck. “We just wanna know how—“

But Chuck is looking right at Dean now and there’s such a look of regret on his face; “You must hate me… I hate me. I mean, who would DO this kind of thing?”

Dean has his jaw clenched and he’s squeezing the strap of Sputnik’s lead like his life depends on it.

Sam only belatedly realizes Dean has his fingers curled in like claws on his left shoulder over the scar there and wonders again exactly what his brother is hiding from him.

Chuck slouches heavily in his chair, eyes unfocused hands lifted and twitching around his glass of booze; “I killed your father. I burned your mother alive—I—“

“Yeah, you need to stop talking now,” Dean’s mouth curls up in something like a smile if a smile were dark and threatening.

Chuck swallows audibly and looks at his computer screen, rubs his eyes and lets out a puff of breath; “I toyed with your lives for entertainment—“

“You didn’t toy with us, Chuck. You didn’t create us… Just—just kind of typed up what happened.”

Chuck looks up at him with a dumb expression on his face; “Did you really have to live through the bugs?”

Dean shifts on his feet, nudges Sputnik away from a pizza box that’s fallen out of the garbage can and focuses on the far window; “Yeah.”

“What about the ghost ship?”

“Yeah, that too.”

Chuck’s nose wrinkled up  and he opened his mouth to speak—thought better of it and clamped his teeth together, met Dean’s eyes and spoke in something near a whisper; “What about the djinn?”

Sam saw his brother flinch from the corner of his eye; “What about the djinn?”

Chuck’s mouth opened—and closed tightly; “Nothing… It wasn’t even published anyway… Sera didn’t think it was ‘realistic’… she said I was trying to scratch out a bigger fan base too desperately and compromised my characters,” He fingers the edge of the tabletop; “I can’t believe I did that to you—“

“Chuck, you’re not a god!”

Sam raises his voice enough to boot Dean out of the conversation again; “We think you’re probably just psychic.”

Chuck snorts; “You think if I was psychic I’d be writing? Writing is hard!” He slouches dramatically, “If I were psychic I’d have conjured up the winning Power Ball numbers years ago and got the hell outta Dodge!” 

Sam wets his lips; “Well, you probably are… it seems that you’re just— focused on our lives.”

“Like laser focus,” Dean snorts and nudges Sputnik back from the pizza box again. “Oh, no… Last thing you need is cheese. Not after last time—You fart in my baby you’re riding the rest of the way strapped to the hood!”

Chuck hiccupped and took another long draught of his booze, clicked his computer open and made a hissing spluttering noise at the screen.

“Are you workin’ on something right now?” Dean scowls at him.

Chuck looks up innocently and rolls his head back on his shoulders; “Holy crap…”

Chuck is significantly more forthcoming after that, spends fifteen minutes fighting with his printer waiting for a document then stapling the pages together in order. He doesn’t talk while he does it, just keeps glancing at Dean and the dog. When Sam asks if he can use the toilet Chuck nods and points up the stairs; “Second door on the left.”

The moment Sam is upstairs Dean feels the smaller man’s eyes on him like insect bites on the back of his neck. He leans his hip against the side of Chuck’s table and looks down at him, wraps Sputnik’s lead around his leg and fist to keep her away from the pizza crusts and speaks in a low voice; “You wrote about it… didn’t you.”

“Wrote about what? I write about… well, just about everything I guess.”

“The Djinn.”

Chuck swallows with a measure of difficulty; “Yeah.”

“How much?”

“All of it.”

“All of it?”

“I thought it was very Danielle Steel—“

“Cripes,” Dean rubs his face.

“Yeah…” Chuck looks plainly uncomfortable.

Dean nods; “Castiel too?”

His breath shudders out of his chest; “Yeah.”

Dean’s jaw seems to lock and he focuses on breathing for a minute before he lets himself speak; “How did that happen anyway? Why did I—Why did I see him before I met him?”

“I don’t know… I guess that’s probably a good thing since I didn’t—“

“Which book is it in?”

“What?”

Dean sneered; “Cas… Which book?”

Chuck clears his throat; “The short stories thing… It—it wasn’t printed. Sera said it was unrealistic. That it alienated you from the existing fan-base.”

Dean snorted, squeezed his hands together until his fingers ached. “I want that book, Chuck… Where is it?”

“I can’t just—“

“Now.”

He exhales, purses his lips; “I’ll print off a copy for you, OK? But the original hard copy is in a safety deposit box—Copyright reasons, alright? I’m not trying to screw you over! I’ll print off a copy.”

Dean lets out a breath and relaxes a little, looks down at his hands and back up; “Alright, I need you to give it to me straight. Just—just say it… This grace in me—You know about that right?” He glances back, sees Chuck nod and continues; “Does that make me—does it make me not human?”

Chuck swallows; “No…”

Dean exhales, lets his shoulders sag in relief—

“It makes you more.”

0-0-0

“I’m sitting in a Laundromat reading about myself sitting in a Laundromat reading about myself—God my head hurts—“

Sputnik is lazing about under Dean’s feet chewing on her towel, Dean’s sitting on the edge of the folding table absently swinging his feet. He glances down at her and wrinkles his nose. The towel’s clean and smells fresh but won’t for long now that she’s got it back, he shakes his head.

Sam bundles their dirty clothes into the washer he’s chosen and exhales; “There’s something this guy’s not telling us.”

Dean cleared his throat; “’Sam tossed his gigantic darks into the machine. He was starting to doubt Chuck, whether he was telling the whole truth.’”

Sam glanced at him nervously; “Stop it.”

Dean looked down at the page again; “’ “Stop it,” Sam said.’” He worked his tongue against the backs of his teeth; “Guess what you do next.”

He shook his head and turned back to the washer;

“’Sam turned his back on Dean, his face brooding and pensive.’”

“Knock it off.”

“’”Knock it off,” He looked determinedly over his shoulder giving Dean a thunderous look.’”

“I mean it, Dean.”

“’”I mean it, Dean,” His heart was beating faster now. He could hear it in his ears, like steam engine rushing toward oblivion.’”

Sam turned and snatched the pages out of his hand, rolled them up and stuck them in his back pocket, out of Dean’s reach. “You’re an ass.”

“That’s in there too, yanno,” Dean scoffed; “I mean I don’t know how this guy is doing it, but he’s doing it! I can’t see your face, but those are definitely your ‘brooding and pensive’ shoulders.”

Sam inhaled slowly and let it out, swiped a hand behind himself and managed to slap Dean’s wrist as he yanked the pages back.

Dean scurried away and hopped onto the folding table again. He unrolled the pages, scanning down them and gave Sam a dark look; “You just thought I was a dick.”

Sam blinked, eyebrows up; “Guy’s good.”

Dean wrinkled his nose and gave him a displeased look. “Yeah? Well what am I thinking?”

“You’re thinking? Congratulations.”

Sam calls Bobby when they get back to the hotel, tells the older hunter everything and listens while Bobby tells them what he’s learned about the publisher.

Dean flops over onto his bed and tries to ignore it when Sputnik jumps up beside him and rests her head on his hip. That spike of pain he’d felt while looking at Chuck earlier had lingered as a dull twinge behind his eyes and now, the longer he focused on it the worse it got. He fishes the Valerian root out of his toiletries case and swallows two of them. When Sam asks if he’s OK he flaps a hand at him and pulls his arm over his face. He dozes off for a while, dreams of vague shapes lit from within. Like flashlights under a blanket and voices that aren’t voices… pressure from all sides, a strange sense of KNOWING, but he’s not deeply asleep enough for them to mean anything.

Sam wakes him up after eight says he called in an alternate to take care of the haunting in the city and that he’s going out to get food; “Do you want Chinese or Pot Roast? There’s a diner a few miles back I can bring you something if you wanna go back to sleep.”

Dean says something, he doesn’t know what it is, rubs his cheek into his pillow, only half realizes Sputnik’s snuggled up under his arm like a pillow or something and grunts lazily. It’s weird, but he hasn’t been this relaxed in a while and it—it feels nice.

Sam snorts, amused and leaves, locks the door behind himself.

Dean lets his eyes fall shut. He’s so used to Nightmares that he doesn’t know what’s happening at first.

It reminds him, only in terms of shape, of the room at Bobby’s where he and Sam sleep.  That’s where the similarities end.

There is a window and curtains fluttering on a breeze, but the window isn’t anchored in anything, just seems to float there freely. There are no walls, no floor. Everything is dim, muted as if through a thick fog.

Dean can feel himself lying on his back, relaxed and almost boneless but not tired, awake and curiously staring at the window. There are warm, soft sheets beneath him, a pillow under his head. He’s naked in a way that feels more than physical and a low hum is pulsing through the air like electricity, tingling along every inch of his exposed skin.

A hand touches his face, cups his cheek and when turns his head to look—

“Dean, hey… Dude, you’ve slept enough, come on. Chuck called me, get up, it’s past nine!” Sam’s standing over him with a bagel impaled on one finger the rest curled around a cup of coffee. “Really, come on, you’re starting to worry me.”

Dean pushes himself up a little too quickly and rubs the grit from his eyes.

“I brought you some decaf and an omelet,” Sam cocks his head to the side; “You alright?”

Dean looks around dazedly, rubs a hand over his chest. He’s under the blankets, when did he get under the blankets? W-where are his jeans?

“Dean?” Sam steps closer, makes sure his brother sees the movement of his hand and presses the backs of his knuckles to his brow. Dean doesn’t push him away and little red flags are popping up in the forefront of Sam’s mind; “Okay, what’s wrong,” He sits on the edge of his bed and snags his bagel with his teeth, sets his coffee down; “You’re not acting right,” and chews around the words.

Dean rubs his face again, can’t quite get his mind to wake up; “I thought you were gonna get dinner.”

Sam stops mid-chew and glances to the side; “I did… last night. You—you don’t remember that?” He swallows, “I brought you potato soup and grilled cheese because you told me ‘no meat’. Then you watched reruns of Starsky and Hutch on TV for like—three hours and fell asleep cuddling the dog.”

Dean looks at him like he’s grown a third eye.

Sam exhales deeply; “Yeah, that’s not worrying at all… You got any headaches? Vision OK?” He stands and goes to his bag, pulls out that ugly log book of Dean Smith’s and flips through the pages, clicks the pen and starts writing.

Dean’s mouth flaps uselessly and as soon as he realizes it’s happening he clenches it shut.

Sam finishes whatever he’s writing and passes the container with Dean’s food in it over, puts the log book back in his bag and returns to his coffee.

Dean eats silently, nods and grunts when Sam’s story calls for it. Sam eats all but about two bites of his bagel and gives the rest to the dog where she’s taken up residence between his feet.

Dean slinks into the bathroom for a shower and listens to Sam and the dog playing tug-of-war with her towel as he’s getting dressed.

It’s a surprisingly uneventful drive. Sputnik sits on Dean’s feet with her head on his shin, yawns and thumps her tail against the floorboard when he looks down at her.

Chuck doesn’t look as drunk as he had the day before. He’s dressed for one, motions them in and makes sure the door is shut behind them. He clears his throat and swings his arms, picks up a thick bundle of papers and fingers their edges. “I –uh—”

Dean rubs a hand over his face and Sam inhales deeply, lets it out; “You wrote another chapter?”

Chuck bares his teeth, nods. “This was so much easier before you were real…”

Dean snorts and looks away.

Sam bites his lip and crosses his arms; “It’s alright, just… Just start at the beginning.”

Chuck looks up at him warily, then back down to the pages in his hands, turns to Dean and screws up his face apologetically; “You’re REALLY not gonna like this.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t like Hell,” He gives one of those smile-not-smiles. “I don’t like walkin’ around with a tickin’ time bomb in my head—“

“Dean…”

He grinds his teeth.

Chuck inhales deeply and looks down at his pages again. “It’s Lilith… she’s coming for Sam.”

“Coming? To Kill him?”

“When?”

Chuck shifts on his feet, “Tonight… Uh,” He sank onto his couch and pulled his glasses back on, looked like one of those grungy professors from the movies and read aloud from what he’d written.

Sam laughed.

Dean stared at him.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

Dean wrinkled his nose; “You think this is funny?”

“And you don’t? I mean—come on! ‘Fiery demonic passion?’”

Chuck shifted his shoulders; “It’s just a first draft. It’s not—“

Dean waved a hand at him; “Wait… Lilith is a little girl.”

Chuck stares at him with his mouth open for a few seconds, Dean has the impression he wore that same look a lot in school; “No,” He cards through his pages again; “This time she’s a ‘comely dental hygienist from Bloomington, Indiana…”

Dean’s hands slap to his sides and his breath comes out in an exasperated whoosh; “Great, just perfect,” He rubs the bridge of his nose; “So, what happens after the… whatever—“ He really doesn’t want to think about his brother getting fiery or passionate with anyone, forget the whole demonic aspect. Jesus Christ.

Chuck flinches; “I don’t know… It hasn’t come to me yet… Usually I’m a little more ahead. Writing in present tense is—“

Sam cuts him off, meets his brothers eyes and lifts his brows earnestly; “There’s nothing to worry about, Dean. Lilith and me? In bed?”

Dean looked away, expression nauseated.

Sam scratches his fingers through his hair and turns to Chuck, twirls a finger in the air urgently; “How—how do you know what you’re going to write? You said it comes to you? How does that happen?”

Chuck’s mouth flaps and after a moment he clears his throat and glances away. “My Process is—It’s very private—“

“Oh, jeez…” Dean rolls his head on his shoulders, can just imagine that Chuck’s psychic whatever come to him while he’s jerking off. That’d just be their luck.

Sam must have been thinking the same thing because his eyebrows shoot up and his teeth appear between rolled back lips.

Chuck rubs his face; “It usually starts with a headache. A really bad headache… Aspirin is useless, so I drink until I fall asleep. The first time it happened I thought it was just a crazy dream… It flowed. It just—it kept flowing,” He inhales deeply and looks up at them apologetically; “It’s still going. I can’t stop it— I didn’t know what else to do, so I—“ He swallows, “I started writing.”

0-0-0

Dean leaves Sam at the new motel and takes the dog.

Sam thinks it’s a bad idea, says so in as many words but Dean seems pleased enough to risk it just so he can get back behind the wheel. He’s so pleased really, that he lets Sputnik in the front seat and the last Sam sees of them that afternoon is the dog’s grinning face in the window and Dean turning on the radio as they pull out of the parking lot.

Sam waits a grand total of thirty seconds before he calls Chuck.

Chuck arrives on his motorcycle, keeps shifting his eyes warily back and forth.

Sam offers him something to drink, scratches his head and motions to one of the chairs at the small table by the window.

It’s tense—more than tense. Chuck doesn’t want to be here, Sam doesn’t want to be here, but there are so many questions. So many variables that Sam feels willing to risk it.

“I just wanted to ask you how much you know.”

Chuck fingers the chipped edge of the table; “About what?”

Sam’s mouth opens but he hesitates, looks down where his own hands are folded, then back up; “First… How much do you know about me?”

“What do you mean?”

He exhales; “Have you seen visions of me… When I’m not with Dean?”

Chuck shifted uncomfortably; “You wanna know if I know about the demon blood?”

Sam’s fingers spasm and his jaw twitches. “You didn’t tell Dean?”

“I didn’t even write it into the books… I was afraid it would make you look unsympathetic.”

“Unsympathetic?”

“Yeah, come on, Sam. I mean, sucking blood? You gotta know that’s wrong.”

The problem is he does. He knows it is wrong… and he can’t stop. He can’t make himself stop. It’s a means to an end, that’s all. He doesn’t enjoy it—tells himself again that he doesn’t enjoy it— It’s just something he has to endure to keep Dean safe. He has to do it to keep his brother safe. When it’s over, when he’s killed Lilith he’ll quit. He’ll stop when it’s over. “I have to do this. It’s the only way I have a chance of stopping the Apocalypse.”

Chuck’s brows curl down; “I thought that was Dean’s job. That’s what the angels say.”

Sam inhaled slowly, picked at a chip in the edge of the table; “Dean’s not— He’s not Dean lately. Ever since he got out of Hell, he’s—You know he has an eating disorder? That he’s been hurting himself? And the dreams—“ He snorts, “—Don’t get me started on the dreams.”

Chuck is watching him, all gray eyes and fuzzy hair. Sam has to look away for a second so he can continue.

“He’s not… He needs help.”

“So you’ve gotta carry the weight?”

Sam doesn’t look up, can’t; “He’s looked after me my whole life. I can’t return the favor?”

Chuck nodded; “Yeah, sure you can… I mean, if that’s what this really is.”

“Yeah, what else would it be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the demon blood makes you feel stronger? More in control.”

Sam felt a shiver run up his spine. He shakes his head, looks away—back again, shakes his head some more; “No. That’s not true. I-I’m doing this to help him. When it’s over I’ll quit. I won’t need it anymore.”

“Do you really believe that, Sam?”

He looks over at Chuck and grinds his teeth.

“Do you really believe that you’ll be able to stop after you’ve drowned yourself in it if you can’t even conceive of it now?”

His teeth ache and the words come out between them like a hiss; “Yes.”

Chuck rocks back, doesn’t say anything else about it.

Sam exhales; “Am I going to be able to stop Lilith tonight?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen that far yet.”

Sam breathes in and out, nods and clears his throat; “Do you know what happened to Dean?”

Chuck swallows again, like he’s trying not to vomit. “You mean in Hell?”

Sam nods slowly.

“Not all of it… Just—just glimpses… What’s in the books, what he told you—I-I can’t even picture him going through that for forty years… I mean, Three chapters was enough—“

“What about the djinn? What happened there?”

Chuck’s mouth opens and closes. He doesn’t speak.

“I deserve to know, Chuck. It’s bad enough that it’s compromising his judgment, I deserve to know.”

Chuck’s jaw tightened and he met Sam’s eyes evenly for a five count—just five tiny little seconds—Looked down at his hands and sighed.

0-0-0

Dean’s sitting in his father’s armchair when Chuck gets home. The dog is at his side, head tilted eyes almost shut as Dean scratches her head and for some reason the elder Winchester looks like some villain out of a Bond film.

Chuck swallows and wets his lips; “Dean.”

“I take it you knew I’d be here?”

“You could say that,” Chuck pulls the other chair forward and sits in it, puts his alcohol on the coffee table and hands Dean a beer.

“I can’t drink that—“

“You’re gonna need it. I’d give you something stronger, but…” Chuck lets his breath out and when Dean takes the can he pops one open for himself. “I saw the car—“

Dean bares his teeth.

“You look terrible.”

 “That’s because I just got hit by a minivan,” He opens the can and takes a slow drink, eases back in his seat stiffly and rubs a growing knot on the side of his head. Sputnik scratches at his ankle, looking for some sort of reassurance and Dean finally relents, drops his hand onto her head and scratches behind her nearest ear.

“Oh.”

Dean snorted; “Every damned thing you write about me comes true, and all you have to say is ‘Oh’?”

Chuck shifts nervously on his feet; “Well, she wasn’t supposed—“

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what she was supposed to do! The details are different, but the result’s the same! Now I want some answers—“

“Please, don’t yell at me—“ He has his hands up, fingers curled like maybe he wants to tangle them in his hair. “Just let me—talk… Just let me talk, OK?”

Dean grinds his teeth.

“Sam asked me about the djinn.”

Dean squeezes his beer can a little too hard, tips it up and downs half of it in one go. His chest hurts, his head hurts—everything hurts. “I take it you told him?”

“Not all of it…”

“No?”

He shakes his head; “I started to tell him you were shacked up with some _shikse_ … but I… He kinda dragged it outta me.”

Dean finishes his beer and smashes the can between his hands. Chuck stares at him, probably imagining his windpipe in place of the aluminum.

“I didn’t tell him it was Cas… I-I didn’t mention any names or anything—“

“Just that in my head my ‘perfect someone’ is a guy?”

“He knew something like that was going on already… I just—”

“How the hell do you know these things?”

“I don’t know, how I know… I just do, OK?”

“No, not OK. Not by a long shot—“ Dean’s on his feet standing over him before he even realizes it and the next second there’s a hand on his arm and a familiar voice in his ear.

“Don’t do this, Dean… It’s not his fault.”

Dean turns and takes a swing, feels his fist crack against Castiel’s jaw—Like a solid marble statue covered in a thin veneer of skin. It doesn’t even move the angel’s head. Dean bounces away shaking his fist and rubbing the split in his knuckles. Sputnik is grunting happily, prancing in circles at the angel’s side, jumping up to paw at his knee and prancing some more.

Chuck is huddled back in his mother’s chair staring out from behind his arms with wide shocked eyes.

Castiel turns from him and levels his stare at Dean; “This man is to be protected… You cannot harm him.”

He knew this was a bad idea. Knew putting himself at risk and taking a case was a bad idea, but he’d done it anyway because if he didn’t who would… Now he wished he’d stayed back at Bobby’s. Now he wished he’d told Sam ‘No’ and made his brother stay with him—showed him how to properly tape up chrome and glass and give the truck a matching paintjob.

Now here he was again, faced with an angel—THE angel. Christ on a stick… “Why?” He shakes his fist out, presses the split edges of his knuckles back together and holds to stem the blood flow.

Castiel lowers his chin and holds a hand out, fingers splayed at waist level, like that should mean something to Dean. His edges were flickering, one second the color was there then it wasn’t and the headache from bouncing his skull off the pavement was back worse than ever. He was tired of this… Once and for all, he was tired of this crap.

“Because he is a Prophet of the Lord.”

Wonderful… Beautiful.

Dean took another swing at him, just for the release of endorphins and sneered when the angel caught his fist in one hand and forced it to his side again. Castiel was stronger than he looked… A lot stronger. Like pick up a car stronger.

Chuck let out a low noise, kind of like a whimper; “You—“

Dean and the angel both turned to look at him for entirely different reasons.

Chuck’s expression was something close to awe; “You’re Castiel, aren’t you?”

His mouth opens and closes and Dean only realizes there’s a blush creeping into the angel’s cheeks because he’s so close. You wouldn’t be able to hear it in his voice, but it’s there, faint and oozing back toward his ears; “It’s an honor to meet you, Chuck. I—Admire your work.”

Dean shrugs him off and lifts his hands, like he’s trying to press two opposing forces apart; “Whoa, whoa… What? This guy is a Prophet?”

Castiel’s on the other side of the room now, has picked up a tattered paperback and is carefully pressing the pages flat. His ears are still red.

Dean snorts and points. Chuck has shuffled around in his seat, opened his bottle of scotch and is in the process of drinking it right from the bottle.

“Come on! He—He’s practically a _Penthouse Forum_ writer! Did you see this shit!” Dean snatches the book away from Cas and tosses it back onto the desk, levels a finger in the angel’s face and says; “Stop reading about my sex life!” Dean glares in Chuck’s direction; “Did you know about this?”

“I—I might have—uh—dreamt about it.”

Dean’s fist curls up until his nails bite into his palm and he’s two seconds—two seconds from decking a Prophet. “And you didn’t tell us?”

“It was too preposterous!” He takes another gulp of scotch; “Not to mention arrogant! I mean, writing yourself into the story is one thing, but as a prophet? That’s some M. Night Level douchery right there,” He drops his hand into his palm; “I mean even my grandmother would have said that was enough and she practically worshiped the ground I walked on—“

Dean covers his eyes. Can’t take all the noise. Chuck’s rambling, Sputnik’s barking and yipping, the marching band practicing in his head. He drops his head back on his neck and rolls his eyes to Castiel, sees the angel paging through that book again and the color in his ears has dripped to his neck now. Dean laughs, helpless and thin, motions to Chuck with the flat of one hand and swings his other arm around like he’s a show magician; “Ladies and Gentlemen… The Prophet.”

Castiel squints at him; “I detect sarcasm—“

“Ya think!” Dean jabs a finger at Chuck and the sound of his own voice goes through his head like a pike; “This is the guy who decides our fate?”

“He isn’t deciding anything. He’s a mouthpiece, a conduit for the inspired word.”

“The word? What WORD?” He licks his lips; “The word of God?”

Chuck mumbles something helplessly and slouches farther in his chair.   
Dean snorts, lifts his hands and feels his lips curling up; “That’s it… I’m—You can’t expect me to believe this!”

“Believe it or not, one day, these books will be known as the Winchester Gospel.”

Dean stares; “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

If it’s annoying when he and Sam say the same thing, it’s down right unbearable when he and this sloppy Prophet do it.

Chuck covers his own mouth, ducks his head and sets his bottle aside; “If you’ll both please excuse me one minute—“ And away he goes up the steps retching into his palm.

“Great, you made the Prophet puke, Castiel. Hope you’re happy.”

Castiel is staring down at the dog with his head tilted just a fraction. They’re having some kind of intense staring match and every so often Sputnik’s tail thumps against the floor eagerly.

Dean shoves a hand over his hair; “This guy’s a Prophet? You—Please tell me you’re joking!”

“You should have seen Luke.”

Dean’s hands curl into fists and the next second Castiel’s hand is cupped against the back of his neck and he’s so close Dean can feel the heat of his vessel’s body. The color is there, edging out, barely visible when he’s so close, but looking for it hurts—looking at the angel hurts so he shuts his eyes tightly and tries not to flinch.

“You need to relax, Dean… Your blood pressure is rising. It could cause—“

Dean tries to shrug from under his hand but Sputnik is at his feet now, pawing at his ankle and looking up at him with worry in her brown fox like gaze.

Castiel blinks and suddenly there is a hand on his chest as well and Dean is aware of pressure, curiosity. A gentle brush like spider webs against his mind.

Dean flinches back—PUSHES with a spike of pain in his head against it—and feels Castiel brush the opposition aside easily, worriedly as he pulls away.

Dean stands there looking at him for a moment with his shoulders tense. For the last month he’s felt like he’s had one everlasting migraine and he’s getting to the point that he can’t take it anymore.  “Why him?”

“I don’t know how prophets are chosen. The order comes from high up on the celestial chain of command.”

“How high?”

“Very.”

Dean rubbed his face and leaned his hip against the table again; “Whatever… how—how do we stop it? How do we get around this?”

“Stop what?”

“This Sam-Slash-Lilith thing—You know… The whole—“ He makes a rolling gesture with his hand; “Fiery Demonic Passion. How do we stop it from happening?”

Castiel looks skyward and exhales; “What the Prophet has written, cannot be unwritten. As he has seen it, so it shall come to pass.”

Dean looks at him—STRAINS against the pain in his head trying to push something forward—anything at all, in hopes of making Castiel see that he can’t let it happen. Screw prophets, screw written word and screw fate. He was NOT going to let this happen— But all it got him was a sharp pain through his eye and back into his head. He clapped a hand to it and flinched back—released and bowed his head toward his knees, breathing slow and careful, hopeless.

Castiel inhaled slowly and let it out. Seemed to eye Dean warily, sadly. “Just—promise you will not pummel the Prophet.”

Dean scoffed and looked up with watery eyes. He didn’t say anything but it was clear that he was no more interested in punching Chuck than he was in playing football at the moment. He nodded and Castiel vanished with a sound like a whipping flag in a storm gale.

Chuck came back down about ten minutes later, still slightly green about the gills and carrying a distinct bitter herbal smell. “Oh… You’re still here.”

Dean looked up and him without a word.

“So… What now?”

Dean rubbed his face; “Can we just not talk for a while?”

Chuck shuffles around nervously, picks up his bottle again and takes a long drink. “Look, I—I’m sorry, OK? About telling Sam… But why didn’t you?”

“Are we really going to do this?” Dean sighed and let his eyes fall closed, “Because it’s not his business.”

“He just wants to help you.”

“Yeah, well, how is knowing THAT going to help me?”

Chuck looks down at his hands, rubs them together and shifts toward his desk, holds out to Dean a manila envelope full of paper. Dean reached out to take them but Chuck held on, met his eyes and spoke carefully;

“I’m sorry, Dean. For what it’s worth… I’m sorry this had to happen.”

Dean takes the envelope scoops up Sputnik’s lead and leaves.

0-0-0

There are four of them, ‘Short Stories’. The title on the front page is simple; _“What is and What Should Never Be.”_

Dean parks by a gas station not far from Chuck’s house, opens the envelope and reads.

Chuck called it simply ‘Djinn’.

It hurts…

Chuck’s words are simple, sometimes repetitive and overly romantic on occasions, but reading them brings it all back. Every bit of it. The words on the page are pale comparison to actually living it. Actually feeling it. He winds up with his fingers in the dog’s fur, scratching between her shoulders as he reads, relives it. She rests her head on his thigh and waits, patient and familiar until he’s reached the end.

It’s not even a hundred pages long and it changed Dean’s life. How is that possible?

After ‘Djinn’ there is another story, the Canonsburg case. ‘Monster Movies’, clever, real imaginative. Some of the text is in red, Dean doesn’t know why, doesn’t really grasp the whole process of editing and different drafts, he never really paid attention to that in English class. There are three snippets of his and Sam’s life growing up. Things he hasn’t thought about in years, strange they would be so unrelated and grouped together in the same ‘book’. The last though Dean doesn’t read. Can’t. It seems tacked on, thrown in because Chuck didn’t want to edit it out completely—Maybe he had just put this in there for Dean.

It’s only four pages, barely that. It talks about the time John had hit him when Sam ran away, talks about how being backhanded by his own father hadn’t hurt as much as it should have because he’d expected it… he’d wanted it.

It’s like having his darkest secrets pulled out and dictated back at him by his worst enemy—himself.

He doesn’t read all of it, can’t. Stuffs the pages back into the envelope and throws it into the back, tells himself he’ll burn it later and starts the engine. It’s getting late and he’s tired, exhausted really.

Dean only sees the hotel sign when he climbs out of the car and everything south of his navel and north of his knees shrinks up in fright. Sam is there when Dean comes in, looks like he’d been taking a nap, his hair is mussed and the lamp by his bed is on.

Dean shuts the door behind himself; “We’re getting out of here, get your stuff.”

“What?” Sam shakes his head; “Where?”

“Anywhere, okay? Out of this motel, out of this town. I don’t care if we gotta swim. We’re getting OUT… Just get your stuff and come on!”

“Just, hold on a second—“

Dean fumbles in the bedside drawer, the kitchenette drawer, side table—“Where are the hex bags?”

“I burned them.”

Dean stares at him, feels his heart in his throat; “What—“

Sam holds out a hand; “Look, if Lilith is coming, which is a big if—“

Dean grabs him, wants to shake him but he’s too angry, just digs his fingers in and squeezes; “No. It’s more than an ‘if’, Sam. Chuck is not a psychic. He’s a fucking Prophet.”

Sam’s nose wrinkles; “What?”

Dean says it, plain and simple, no sugar coating it, no lube. Just Boom. There it is.

Sam’s mouth drops open a little.

“Good talk? Good. Now let’s get the hell out of here,” He snatches up his bag again and smacks Sam’s shoulder as he passes.

“No.”

“No?”

“I have a chance here—“

“No, you don’t. Lilith is going to slaughter you. She will flay your skin off and eat your internal organs with cake frosting, Sam.”

“Maybe she will, maybe she won’t—“

“You think you can take her? Is that it? You think you can overpower Lilith with what—Sex?”

Sam rolled his eyes in exasperation; “I am not going to have sex with her, Dean.”

“Sam—“

“You think I’ll do it, don’t you. You think I’ll go dark side.”

“Yes!”

Sam takes half a step back, works his tongue at the backs of his teeth; “Why would you think that? Do you not trust me at all—“

Dean shoved him, not hard enough to knock him over, but hard enough to get his point across; “I don’t think. I KNOW.”

“You don’t know me, Dean. You don’t know—“

“I know the way you’ve been acting and the things you’ve been doing— I KNOW because I can SEE you, Sam! I can see you goin’—goin’ all black at the edges and I can’t do a thing about it… You know what’s all black around the outside like that? Demons… And _only_ demons—“ His breath shudders in and out; “And it scares the hell outta me that you…” He gestures toward Sam’s chest with a mirthless chuckle and turns away rubbing his sleeve over his face.

Sam doesn’t say anything at first, just stares at him with wide eyes and a shocked expression.  “Dean… are you—are you saying that I’m—“

Dean doesn’t look at him, can’t make himself really. He turns and heads for the door, tries to be forceful when he speaks but it comes out cracked; “Are you coming or not?”

Sam inhales deeply and lets it out. “I can’t leave, Dean… Not if I have a chance of stopping her.”

Dean nods, clears his throat and nods again. He drops his bag into the chair by the door and that’s the only indication Sam gets that he’s not being abandoned to his fate because Dean leaves. Storms out and slams the door behind him.

Dean buys a package of potato chips and a coke, leans against the side of the building out of sight of the room and feeds the chips to the dog while he drinks—wishes it was a beer or maybe something stronger. He empties the bag of chips onto the sidewalk for Sputnik and turns his eyes skyward.

There aren’t any stars out, not that he can see. Either it’s too cloudy or too bright from all the houses. He can feel them up there, but he just can’t see them. His head tilts back and his eyes slide closed, feels his hands move on some foreign instinct he thinks may come from the grace in his chest. Opening himself up and displaying his vulnerability with turned palms and empty fingers; “I feel kinda stupid doin’ this… But I am fresh out of options,” He wets his lips, “I need some help… I’m prayin’ here… O—“

He feels Castiel before he sees him, like always. An electric charge up his spine and into his chest and his breath whooshes out of his chest as he turns.

Castiel stares at him, as if he hadn’t expected Dean to notice his presence yet and tilts his head.

Dean doesn’t look for the color of him, he’s too tired and his head hurts too much to even attempt it, instead he rubs his face with both hands and just talks; “You—you gotta help me.”

“I’m not sure what I can do—“

“Drag Sam outta here now, before Lilith shows up!”

“It’s a prophecy. I can’t interfere—“

Dean feels his lips pull back from his teeth, feels rage bubbling up in his middle and he steps close, close enough that his words barely have sound and maybe that’s why he feels like it should frighten him, but it doesn’t; “You have tested me and thrown me every which way. I have never asked for anything— Not a damned thing… But I’m asking now. Please—PLEASE, get Sam out of here before that demon shows up. Before she has the chance to take away the last thing I have.”

Castiel shifts on his feet and casts his eyes upward with something close to fear in his eyes; “What you’re asking—“ The look on his face is apologetic; “—Is not within my power to do.”

“Why? Because it’s divine prophecy?”

“Yes.”

“So we’re just supposed to sit around and wait for it to happen? Castiel, this—this is my BROTHER. I—I can’t just sit back and wait for that demon bitch to come and tear his face off! He won’t win! She’ll kill him!”

Castiel pressed his lips together, tried to hold back that pressure of foreign emotion in his chest. The fear and longing and desperation. The urge to DO something, to HELP, but the cold unforgiving knowledge that if he did it would go against everything he knew—EVERYTHING.

Dean looks at him and it hurts somewhere in his core, the urge. The WANT. There is an instant, some fleeting thing, where looking at him, Castiel thinks he’s seen Dean’s expression curled into desperate hopefulness like that before. That he’s heard his voice pulled high and thin on panic and fear and need. _Please, Cas, PLEASE!_

But it is just a moment and passes quickly.

“I’m sorry, Dean.”

Resignation isn’t new, Castiel has seen that before, Dean wore a similar expression before going in to meet Alastair. The sadness isn’t even new… It’s the other things—images and feelings and words that skitter quickly through Dean’s tooloud thoughts. It’s the hope and faith quickly squashed that are new.

Castiel wishes he could see the color of Dean’s soul again, wishes he could see the ripples through it and the light of his own grace burning at its core. He wishes, just for an instant, that he could see all of Dean Winchester so he may have a chance to know him.

“Screw you, Castiel.”

Perhaps it’s the fact he chooses not to resort to vulgarities that makes the message hit home. Dean has a wide vocabulary of expletives, he could easily have used any number of them, but he didn’t. He wants Castiel to know this. He wants this to HURT.

“You’re not who I wanted you to be, I get that. I’ve accepted it… But I thought, just maybe—unlike all the other dicks up there—you cared. I thought YOU at least would get it. Boy was I wrong,” He pushes in close again, hovers at Castiel’s shoulder and spits the words; “If you don’t help me now… then when the time comes and you need me, don’t bother knocking.”

Castiel can feel his vessel’s heart racing, can feel the caged energy in Dean’s chest vibrating, FIGHTING for freedom. He feels himself vibrating along with it, the need and fear and hopelessness. The angel breathes in and lets it out;

“Dean.”

He pauses, freezes in his tracks and turns, meets Castiel’s gaze; “What?”

He talks, speaks slow and as-matter-of-factly, watches the despair in Dean’s expression melt back into a small shard of hope. Castiel feeds it with carefully chosen words. He was ordered not to interfere and he isn’t. Castiel isn’t going to do anything. It’s not his fault the human is stubborn and bloated on his free-will. All Castiel is doing is giving Dean facts, nobody said he couldn’t explain himself and boast of the might of heaven.

Dean moves closer with every step until he’s right there, so close Castiel’s vessel’s eyes almost cross looking at him. “Just so you understand… Why I can’t help.”

Dean moves without thinking, or maybe he’s thinking too much, his eyes are alight and excited and before he can stop himself he has the angel’s face pressed between his palms and is staring into those denim blue eyes; “You son of a bitch, Cas.”

It’s quick WARM. A sudden—unexpected press of Dean’s mouth against his own.

And then he’s gone, running across the parking lot with the dog trailing him, lead lost and dragging. Dean jerks open the door to his car and almost trips over Sputnik when she leaps in ahead of him, but within fifteen seconds Dean is backing out of his parking spot in a squeal of rubber on asphalt and speeding away into the night.

Castiel can feel the heart beating quick—too quick, feel heat in his face both that of his vessel and his own.  He lifts his hands and touches it, weirdly entranced by it and flees.

0-0-0

Sam is quiet for the first few miles, of course, it’s difficult to hear much of anything over the flapping of that damned tarp.

The noise of it is making Dean’s headache worse.

Sam is behind the wheel again and Dean is slouched in the passenger seat with Sputnik’s head on his thigh ruffling the fur on the back of her neck. She’s asleep, drooling a little on his jeans but he doesn’t really care.

Funny, the bridge hadn’t looked damaged at all.

Sam drums his fingers on the steering wheel and glances toward his brother then away again.

“Just spit it out, Sam. We’ve both had a long night and I’m too tired to play guessing games.”

Sam inhaled and his mouth twitched; “What you said, about my soul… Is—is it really…”

Dean doesn’t look at him; “Yeah.”

“So, I’m… I’m becoming like them.”

“You’re nothing like them, Sam. I won’t let you become a demon.”

He doesn’t seem to hear Dean at all; “What if it’s something neither of us can stop? What if this is what Dad warned you about?”

“Stop it, Sam. You are not going to become a demon—“

“You don’t know that—“

“I DO know that.”

“How?”

He hesitates, breathes in and focuses on something outside the window, the rush of the road as they pass maybe, perhaps power lines illuminated by the headlights; “I spent forty years in Hell… I-I did things—I became something else… Now, I don’t know what’s happening to you and what you can do scares the shit out of me, but I can’t believe that you’re turning into a demon when I didn’t… I won’t.”

Sam doesn’t look at him, breathes slowly and looks away to swallow a knot in his throat, forces the subject to change but it doesn’t ease the fear growing in his chest.

“Lilith tried to make a deal with me… She’d cease and desist all plans to bring on the Apocalypse if I let her kill us.”

Dean stares at him; “Seriously?”

“That’s what she said.”

“You didn’t consider it?”

“No… She’s a demon, Dean… She would have figured out a way to weasel out of it and we wouldn’t be here to stop her.”

He nodded, didn’t say anything for a while.

“She did let one thing slip though.”

“What?”

“She isn’t going to make it through the Apocalypse.”

“No?”

“She’s desperate and scared.”

Dean looks at him through his fingers, leans his head back against the seat and sighs; “Mean’s she’s doubly dangerous.”

“Yeah… but she’ll do anything to prevent it. Tonight just proves it…” He thinks quietly for a few seconds; “What if we could figure out a way to trap her?”

“Trap Lilith? Why would we wanna do that?”

“To kill her, Dean.”

“Oh, I think we’ve successfully proven we can’t without some big-time interference… We had to call down a fucking Archangel just to scare her off.”

Sam wets his lips nervously; “What if we had something other than the knife that could hurt her? Something stronger.”

Dean blinked. “Okay, you’ve got my attention… What else do we have that can hurt her?”

“You.”

 “Me?” A scoff, “What the hell—“

“Just think for a minute… Lilith is a white-eyes. You can hurt her the same way you hurt Alastair in Union.”

Dean stares at him, feels his heartbeat kick up a few paces; “Consecration by Grace.”

Sam’s lips curled up at the edges. “Exactly… You do that to a couple knives, we have a whole demon killing arsenal. You could do it to iron rounds and we wouldn’t even have to get close!”

It was a sound theory, at least to hear it. What if he could do that? He could conceivably arm every hunter they knew with something that could kill demons; “Only one problem with that.”

“What?”

“I have no idea how I did it.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	20. Blood and Iron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two Chapters today, two thursday.

0-0-0

It was not a conversation Dean wanted to have. He knew it was coming just as surely as a celestial backlash was building because he’d… what he’d done to Castiel.

Did people go to hell for kissing angels? Was that considered a sin? Christ, what if Sam had seen?

“We should talk,” Sam’s jaw was tense, eyes straightforward, locked on the wet of the road caught in their headlights.

Dean grunted and shifted his head against the window; “’m sleepin.”

“Dean—“

He made a hollow snoring noise as a last resort.

Sam scoffed; “This is serious.”

Dean rolled his eyes and rubbed his face. Sputnik whined a complaint when he sat up straighter and waited until he’d settled before she put her head back on his thigh, sighing as if she just couldn’t understand why he couldn’t hold still.

Dean focused on the road, tried to ignore that godawful flapping noise from the tarp on the back glass and propped his jaw on his fist; “Fine, talk.”

“Anything you want to tell be about the djinn thing?”

“Not really, no—”

Sam flexed his fingers against the steering wheel.

“—But just for your information, I know what Chuck told you… And if I wasn’t so tired I’d be pissed that you’d go behind my back like that.”

“What’d you expect me to do? You haven’t exactly been forthcoming when I’ve asked.”

“Because it’s none of your damned business! What, does it give you some kind of power trip to know? Is that it? Is that why you’ve been so insufferable the past few weeks?”

“Dude—the past few weeks we’ve been different people—“

“You know what I mean!”

Sam inhaled deeply and let it out, “Look, I knew something was wrong. I wasn’t expecting THAT—“

“Oh, bullshit! He told me—“

“And you’re going to believe him over your own brother?”

“In this particular instance—Yes! You think I’m the only one keepin’ secrets lately, Sam? Look in the fuckin’ mirror!”

“I am just trying to protect you, Dean—“

He snorted; “That’s hilarious!”

“What, I don’t have the right to help you when you need it?”

Dean focused on the side of the road, the flicker of the headlights against debris in the ditch; “I don’t need help—“

“Yes, you do. Not only have you only been back for five months—from Hell, I might add— But you suffered a severe and life altering injury … I—Jesus, just let me help so I don’t feel like I’m standing on the sidelines watching you drown…”

“I’m not drowning—“

“You wanted to give up hunting. YOU. Wanted to give up hunting.”

“For good reason—“

“What? What reason?”

“I’m damaged goods, Sam. What if I go into convulsions while we’re on a case? It’s too dangerous.”

“No, not good enough. We can work around that. As long as you keep taking the medicine and nothing happens to her,” He motions to the dog, “Then there’s no reason why it should hold you back.”

“Are you gonna let me talk?”

Sam rolled his head on his shoulders dramatically.

Dean focused on the road as he spoke, as if that was the only thing keeping him on task; “These angels, Sam. What they’re asking me to do? It—“ He presses his fist to his mouth hard enough that his teeth ache.

Sam keeps quiet, lets his brother think because Dean KNOWS he needs help, he’s just too stubborn to ask for it.

“I can’t ask you for that. Not when you never wanted this to begin with… Because I’m ninety-nine percent certain that I’m not gonna survive this either. Whatever the angels are wanting me to do is gonna kill me. I know that—I also know they’re gonna throw me right back in the pit when it’s over.”

“Why would they do that?”

He squeezes his fingers together so tightly they shake but doesn’t answer.

“Dean—“

Dean shakes his head, stares out the window and threads his fingers into the fur of Sputnik’s neck.

“Dean, they’re not gonna—“ He inhales and changes tactics. “Is that why you didn’t tell me about him?”

He sighs, tilts his head back and closes his eyes. “I didn’t tell you about him because he wasn’t real, it was a fantasy and it meant absolutely nothing.”

Sam presses his lips together tightly and doesn’t speak right away, waits until his brother has settled in his seat, body angled away and hunched defensively; “Anything that could make you feel like THAT, Dean? I’d say is pretty damn real… I mean, I know you’ve had fantasies before, everyone does, but fantasies don’t affect people like this. And before you say it, no amount of djinn poison can make emotions STICK like this. It was REAL to you,” He glances toward Dean and away again; “You can lie to me and lie to yourself all you want but it _was_ **real** to you. Whatever happened, whoever this guy was, he was IT for you. And—and you have the right to be upset about that… But don’t I have the right to try and—I don’t know, be there for you?”

“I don’t need your permission, or your touchy-feely bullcrap—“

“Okay, you don’t wanna talk about it, that’s fine. But I’m just saying. I get it now, why you aren’t fooling around. I get it, I’m starting to understand.”

Dean rubs his face again; “I don’t need you to understand— I don’t WANT you to understand!“

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not something I want to remember! If I could erase all of it, I would!”

Sam blinks at him, “What? Are you really so emotionally ingrown that you would rather erase all of the good things that happened because it _hurts too much?”_ His nose wrinkles up in disgust.

He doesn’t want to say it, can’t really force out those words, so he says something else; “I went to Hell with him in my head, Sam… Why do you THINK I don’t want to remember it at all?”

His brows curl down in confusion and his mouth opens to ask just what the hell Dean meant by that when suddenly he goes still.

Dean can see the moment of realization like a preverbal light bulb went on over his head, the way Sam’s face goes from pinched and maybe even a little angry to sickened and disbelieving and HORRIFIED in less than a second. Dean looks away, swallows past the lump in his throat and says; “Can this conversation be over now?”

Sam doesn’t say anything else about it.

0-0-0

It was shortly after six in the morning when they stopped. Sam was exhausted, couldn’t keep his eyes open, and as much as Dean wanted to get the damage to his baby repaired, he was going to be realistic. Sam did not need any more coffee and there was no way his little brother was going to be able to keep driving without it.

“You’re not driving, Dean—“

“It’s four hours. And unless you wanna park by the interstate with a busted back window and take a nap, we don’t have much choice.”

Sam’s lips thinned.

“The dog’s right there, if I start feeling funny I’ll pull over.”

“Dean—“

“Sam.”

“I’ll just have some—“

“Still my car, Sam… I don’t want you behind the wheel like this,” He held out his hand; “Keys.”

Sam clenched his jaw and shifted defiantly on his feet.

Dean flexed his fingers insistently and Sam relented, dropped the keys into his palm and went for the door.

Dean felt rightfully smug as he took the dog into the grass across the road from the gas station. He was going to get to drive again. Awesome. At least something was going right.

Sputnik found a suitable patch of grass to do her business and Dean turned away, pulled out his phone and dialed. He was nervous, very nervous, but he called Bobby anyway and made his demands; “We need a demon.”

“What?”

“Sam and me… We need a demon, alive.”

“Well, let me just get right on that!”

Dean rolled his eyes; “It’s important, Bobby.”

“What for?”

“I think we found a way to make iron kill them.”

Bobby is quiet long enough to swallow whatever he was drinking; “I should start chargin’ you boys rent…” He exhaled “I’ll see what I can do.”

0-0-0

Dean takes the Impala straight into one of the work bays at Bobby’s and breaks out the shop vac.

There are broken pieces of windshield everywhere and he winds up emptying the back seat completely and vacuuming out the whole car. It takes the better part of two hours but he finds ten dollars in small change and with a sly grin leaves it in an old peanut butter jar Bobby has sitting on top of a tool box marked ‘tips’. If the older man asks Dean thinks he’ll say it’s for rent.

Sam comes out with the dog while he’s wedged in the floorboard getting the shards from under the front bench and gets Dean’s attention long enough to point to a plate of lumpy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and complain that Bobby’s working the phones and threw him out because Sputnik was barking. 

Dean snorts and leans against the fender to gnaw on a sandwich and watch the dog sniff around in the pile of things Dean had removed from the back seat. “What were you doin’ to make her bark?”

“Nothing. She was looking for you, couldn’t find you and started barking… She’s also afraid of stairs. If there are any more than five of them she won’t go up or down them.

“You not remember her freaking out in Cincinnatti after we took care of the Sandover thing? You ended up carrying her down fifteen flights of stairs.”

“Because of YOU…”

“She’s a little dog, Sam. She’s got stumpy legs… stairs are hard when you’ve got stumpy legs.”

Sam rolled his eyes and slumped across the front seat on his stomach, after a moment of prancing Sputnik jumped up and settled in the small of his back like she thought she was a cat or something.

Dean snorted and finished his sandwiches then threatened to vacuum Sam’s hair off his head if he didn’t move it.

Dean wound up pointing the hose at Sputnik and starting the shopvac to get her off Sam’s back and she began barking at it loudly, tail tucked, hackles up, snarling and trying to get her teeth on it. Dean thought it was hilarious, Sam did not.

“You’re terrorizing her!”

“Look at her! She thinks she’s a badass!”

Sam gave the power cord a yank and Sputnik relaxed a little, thinking she’d killed the machine.

Dean went to plug it back in grumbling under his breath.

“Dean, I’m gonna take some of this stuff inside, alright?”

He grunts, gets the shop vac turned on again and pops open the rear passenger door.

Sam rolls his eyes and gathers an armful of things, books and old newspapers and a bag with their dirty/bloodstained clothing in it. “I’ll come back for the rest later.”

Sam leaves the dog with her lead hooked on the side of Dean’s toolbox. She growls threateningly whenever the vacuum gets too close to her but Dean doesn’t tease her again. Just finishes cleaning up the broken glass and searches through his tools for the scraper. He finds it on Bobby’s workbench in the corner and it takes another hour to get everything ready for the new back glass.

Automotive glass is a lot heavier than it looks, but Bobby’s not a complete grump and helps him get it centered and sealed correctly, then sneaks him a beer and listens while Dean goes through his half of the whole Chuck story.

Bobby says they should burn the books, all of them. Like every single copy ever printed.

Dean agrees to a certain extent… But at the same time he thinks about that envelope in his bag and the stupid words Chuck had used to describe Cas and everything they’d had… Dean isn’t so sure he wants to burn that now.

0-0-0

It seems when you don’t want demons, they’re crawling all over. But the second you need one, there are none to be found.

It takes Bobby two days on the phones to find a hunter who’s caught one and another three hours negotiating with the man to get him to bring it in.

Dean’s been working on the truck for two days now, has paint all picked out, sent parts off to be chromed and has traded some information and a couple premium fake IDs to a hunter passing through South Dakota for the custom rims off the man’s totaled pickup. Seems not just the supernatural can ruin a man’s day, but so can fat men in SUV’s asleep behind the wheel.

“I’m just glad I wasn’t in ‘er at the time,” The man says. He’s about Dean’s height with shaggy dirty-brown hair and sideburns, hails from Tennessee and calls himself Sebastian. Bobby gives him a sandwich and takes thirteen-hundred for an eighty-six ford he’s managed to get roadworthy, if in need of a matching paint scheme. It’ll get him where he’s going and do until he finds something better. He’s gone before noon and Dean has the rims cleaned of mud and fitted with new tires. He has the front two on when Bobby comes outside to tell him the good news about the demon.

The man bringing the demon is named Shaw. Bobby says the only way the man agreed to bring it in was if he got to participate.

Dean refused.

Bobby told him they didn’t have a choice.

So Dean spent most of the nine hour wait in the panic room with various iron implements. He tried to ‘Grace them Up’ while Sam took notes. Dean made a comment that his brother would have made a fine secretary and Sam’s face pinched in consideration— then he gave Dean the finger. 

There were a few of Bobby’s fire pokers, a pry bar, a handful of iron rounds (buckshot as well as iron core bullets), one of Bobby’s iron knives, some nails and a handful of iron filings Bobby suggested mixing into salt rounds. Then there were other things, a silver knife, a wooden spoon, various odds and ends just for the experimental quality of it.

Dean started with the bullets.

“I feel like an idiot.”

“Just relax,” Sam was sitting on the bed with his knees drawn up taking notes.

Dean took the iron core bullets in his hands, squeezed his eyes closed tried to remember what he’d done in Union to make it work.

All he could remember was being scared. Seeing Alastair hunched over Castiel like that, building himself up with that spell… Dean hadn’t really thought, he’d just reacted. He’d wanted that demon away from Castiel. He’d wanted that THING away from his Cas—

No. Not his Cas. Never his Cas…

“Anything?” Sam tried to be quiet.

“Shut up, I’m thinking.”

“You look constipated.”

Dean inhaled deeply, focused on that pressure in his chest—focused on the grace and pushed OUT with it.

It felt like his brain was ripping in two—

“Jesus _mother—“_ The bullets scattered across the floor and his hands clapped upward. Everything faded out for a little bit, bright and ringing in his ears. He tasted copper and salt and when the world faded into focus again Sam was kneeling in front of him with a frightened look on his face.

There was blood on Dean’s upper lip, splattered on the floor between his feet, dripping into his mouth and off his chin and his vision was watery—leaking down his cheeks. He chuckled  humorlessly and spat toward the little dots of gore on the concrete.

Sam tried to make him lie down but he wouldn’t. He shook his head wiped the blood from his nose onto a paper towel Sam tore off the roll in the corner and picked up one of Bobby’s knives with shaking hands.  He could hear Sputnik whining at the top of the stairs. She wouldn’t come down on her own but she did stand there and yap every so often. It went through Dean’s head like a spike.

He tried a more gentle approach this time, instead of just PUSHING, he focused more on reaching out, on FEELING the blade.

It still hurt like hell, but it didn’t leave him clinging to consciousness.

He tried the silver blade and a run-of-the-mill kitchen carving knife next. Gave them the same treatment and had to lay down in the floor for a while because Sputnik was making those low ‘Whuff’ sounds in her throat.

Sam went upstairs and got her, brought her down and sat there beside his brother until it was over. Nothing big, nothing dramatic like he was so afraid would happen. Just dizziness and an overwhelming weak trembling in Dean’s limbs. Sam helps him up onto the cot because Dean’s limbs just won’t hold him and ignores the grumbling when he shakes a blanket over his brother’s shoulders, then takes a seat in the floor by the bed and finds the pulse point in Dean’s nearest wrist.

Bobby came down while Dean was sleeping it off and asked how it had gone, then gathered up the bullets, put them back in the box with a shake of his head; “Listen, Sam… I don’t think you boys should let Shaw know about the other knife.”

Sam nodded. “Preaching to the choir here, Bobby.”

“Guy might be the dependable type, but until we know for sure, we don’t tell him about Dean’s… About _that_ , the angels, or the knife.”

Sam nods, uncrosses and re-crosses his legs, keeps his fingers on Dean’s wrist counting the beats of his heart. It’s quiet for a long time, just Dean breathing or the clicks of Sputnik’s toenails on the floor as she explores the panic room, finds crumbs under the desk to lick up and leaves wet nose prints on the concrete. “How much do you know about Dean’s… Uh—The stuff going on with Dean.”

Bobby folded his hands between his knees; “Pretty much everything he’s told you.”

“So you know about the whole, seeing souls thing?”

Bobby nods; “Apparently I light up like Christmas when I’m mad.”

Sam chuckled under his breath. “Did he tell you about me?”

“That you turn bright pink when you’re excited?”

Sam blinked at him; “I what?”

He shrugged; “Like bubblegum.”

“Well that’s comforting,” Sam wondered if Dean just hadn’t told Bobby about the blackness… or if he’d lied about it.

0-0-0

Dean woke up about two hours later. He was cranky and sore and kept squinting at everything, but he insisted on trying one more thing and held the jar of iron filings, eyes closed and breath slow and even.

Sam watched his nostrils flare and a vein pop out on his forehead. Nothing visible occurred except Dean’s face turning slightly gray green. After a moment he put the jar aside and covered his eyes with one shaking hand.

Dean spent the rest of the evening upstairs on the couch with a cold cloth on his forehead and Sputnik lying over his feet.

Sam knew then that something was wrong. Dean had seemed to charge that pry bar so effortlessly in Union. He’d picked it up and just—just SWUNG. Maybe he was trying too hard? Bad thing about it though, they wouldn’t know until they actually tried it… unless.

Sam carefully picked up one of the knives pinched the blade between two fingers and waited for something to happen.

He didn’t feel much of anything really, just cold metal. If he was turning into a demon, wouldn’t this hurt? If the demon blood in his body really WAS changing him… wouldn’t it react? He nicked the skin of his inner arm, near the crease of his elbow where it wouldn’t really be noticed. It stung, but no more than any other cut. Sam let out a breath of relief and put the knife down, turned to look at Dean as he rolled his sleeve back down.

What if he wasn’t turning into a demon and Dean was lying to him, trying to hold him back? Trying to scare him away from hunting down Lilith?

Shaw arrived just after dinner. He wasn’t dressed the way Sam expected him to be. No, Shaw wore black slacks and a black button down tucked unto his pants and a belt with a large ornate silver buckle. It was subtle, may just look like a star to most, but behind the filigree and scroll work it came down to one thing and one thing only, a devil’s trap. He drove a large black dual axel truck with a matching horse trailer, introduced himself as Deputy Marshall Elijah-Ray Shaw and when he said it Sam believed him. This man wasn’t just a hunter, he was actual law enforcement. He gave Sam a slow look that left the younger man feeling greasy and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his slacks, jutted his hips forward and threw his shoulders back like he owned the place. Sam’s eyes lingered on the man’s boots.

“That ain’t snakeskin, boy.”

No, no it wasn’t. Sam was pretty sure from the color, shape and luster of the scales that it was Naga, but he wasn’t going to say anything. This man gave him the willies in a second-grade fashion.

Shaw carried a big gun in a shoulder holster and had another fitted into a holster under his dash. He shook hands like he meant to rip your arm out of its socket and Sam noticed he had a ring on his middle finger, kind of styled like a class ring, with a devil’s trap on it as well.

Bobby stood a good six feet from him at all times, kept one side tilted toward the man. Sam knew it was defensive, wary. Bobby was presenting the smallest target he could to the bastard and lining him up for that little stub-nosed revolver he kept tucked in the waistband of his pants. To look at him you wouldn’t see it, but Sam knew it was there, had seen him yank it out in a few sticky situations and blow the brains out of things. Most notably in his memory a rabid dog that had wondered into the scrap yard when he’d been eight, the summer Dean had his tonsils removed they’d been holed up here, Sam had been bored while Dean recovered, spending a lot of time out in the yard throwing rocks at a line of glass bottles on the hood of an old Buick. He’d been doing just that when he’d seen the mutt staggering around.

Bobby had been in the garage and looked up when he heard Sam start whistling.

Sam remembered the dog running at him all bloodshot brown eyes and sick-greasy maw open wide. Bobby had knocked him out of the way, pulled that gun out and BANG.

Sam had helped him dig a hole out back, soak the corpse in bleach and burn it, then had gone along, sniffling and snot-nosed and splashed bleach everywhere he found splatters of rabid foam and watched Bobby set the puddles ablaze. Dean was upset he hadn’t seen it, Sam hadn’t been able to eat vanilla ice-cream for a month and spent a long while sitting outside with his arms around Rumsfeld’s neck crying into his collar.

Sam got that kind of protective feeling from Bobby now, watching how he eyed Shaw while the man unlocked his horse trailer.

He had the demon chained up in a caged off semi-circle shaped portion in the back of the trailer.  The demon was in some poor girl, couldn’t have been any older than nineteen. There was a nasty bruise around her neck, rope burn Sam decided and a neat devil’s trap cut into her cheek shaped just like Shaw’s ring.

Sam may not like the man, but he wondered if having a ring like that wouldn’t come in handy.

Shaw explains as they lead the demon inside, that the girl’s name is Tilly, she had been in a mental institution, her parents had put her there for ‘hearing voices’ but it seems the poor girl had been possessed the whole time, she’d tried to kill herself to escape them—HAD killed herself, but the demon kept her meat suit going.

They chained her to a chair in Bobby’s study, under his ceiling trap and Sam bent over the couch to shake his brother awake. How Dean had slept through Shaw’s arrival he’ll never understand. Maybe it was a side-effect.

Dean shook himself awake and scrubbed his palms over his face, gave Shaw a once over and deemed him a prick.

Shaw looked down at Sputnik and curled his lip up in disgust; “You some kinda cripple?”

Dean’s jaw tightened; “You some kind of asshole?”

“You better watch your mouth, boy.”

Dean SMILED; “I’d rather watch yours.”

Sam stepped between them before they could come to blows—the violent kind not the kind Dean had been inferring. “Can we just get this over with? That poor girl’s suffered enough.”

Dean turned and eyed the demon, squinted a little and winced at the renewed twinge in his head. He couldn’t exactly see the demon, not anymore, not after whatever Zechariah had done to him. He could make out the vague shape of it, still somewhat humanlike, with elongated arms. He knew there were teeth, got that impression just looking at it and he could just see the girl’s soul dimmed—chewed.

The demon had its black eyes locked on Dean’s, bloody mouth pulled back in a red grin; “Hi, there,” She said. A giggle; “Oh, that looks painful.”

Shaw pulled over a chair and straddled it, “What’re you talkin’ you black-eyed skank?”

The demon clucked her tongue; “Now, is that any way to talk to a lady, Marshall?”

“If I see a lady I’ll let you know.”

The demon chuckled and her voice dropped down and vibrated somewhere around her knees. Low and crackling and not what you’d expect coming out of such a flighty looking kid’s mouth. “Oh, ‘Lijah… Mama’d just cry her eyes out if she knew what you did to this poor girl.”

Shaw just smiled; “My mama’dve stuffed rock salt up your nostrils and punched ya’ in the face, so unless you want me to call her and get her in on this y’ll shut yer cocktrap.”

The demon cackled.

Bobby had a few odds and ends laid out on his desk. The usual, rite of Exorcism, holy water, salt, silver knife, iron knife… the three knives Dean had tried to Charge.

Something deep and hidden in his mind stirred and clucked its sharp tongue. _That’s not enough, he needs to get creative. Where’s the kerosene? The speculum? Rib retractors and bone saw? How does he expect to perform at his best if he doesn’t have the proper tools? A couple knives and some holy water? Please… Tell the man, Dean. Tell him how pathetic this assortment is. Tell him what he needs—_

Dean looked at the knives laid out on Bobby’s desk, back to the demon in the girl’s body and snatched up Sputnik’s lead; “So, let me know how it goes—“

Sam blinked in surprise and followed his brother as he made for the door; “Dean?” He caught his arm outside and lowered his voice; “Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Obviously… You’re not going to wait to see if this works?”

Dean snuffed and shifted his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I’ve had enough torturing to last a thousand lifetimes, Sam… So, no. I’m not going to wait and see if it works. You can give me the whole dear diary version later,” He gave a full bodied shiver; “Keys.”

Sam blinked; “What?”

“Give me my keys, Sam. I know you have ‘em, so give them back.”

Sam’s expression pinches up in barely withheld fury but with a roll of his eyes he pulls them from his pocket and drops them into Dean’s palm. “Where are you going?”

“Store… “

Sam released a long suffering sigh and bowed his head, crossed his arms over his chest. “Call if something happens.”

Dean didn’t reply, just turned and went for his car.

0-0-0

Dean barely makes it a mile before he pulls off and parks by the road, wraps his arms around his stomach and hunches forward in his seat fighting nausea. He turns the radio on for some kind of noise, something to distract him from the screams and darkness roaring in his head and the vomit crawling up the back of his throat.

That damned SONG is playing and he snaps the radio off quickly, tries to content himself with the silence—

Instead he gets a stumpy little paw scratching at his elbow and two big brown eyes staring at him sadly. It’s hard to look at her and not imagine her lips rolling back and those sharp teeth going for his throat, but at the same time she’s looking at him so openly, like she could never hurt a fly.  Dean doesn’t want to think about what’s going on back at Bobby’s. He doesn’t want to imagine what that poor girl is going through while his brother _experiments_ —doesn’t want to think of Sam experimenting with fucking torture… but what if it works?

Souix Falls is your average town, Bobby Singer non-withstanding.

You’ve got your grocery store, your garages, your diners and restaurant chains. Police station, houses, park for all the kiddies, schools. The works.

Dean wants a drink. He wants a drink very, very much actually. But instead he goes to the local park and starts walking the concrete path around the play area and disused soccer field.

Sputnik likes the outdoors, she trots along in front of him happily, stops every so often to stick her nose into things. She hunches up and hides between his feet when a car passes by, whines up at him pathetically but eventually relaxes enough not to look like she’s going to piss all over Dean’s boots in fright.

She sees her first rabbit, whines and barks and strains against the lead trying to get to it but Dean crouches down and catches her vest, holds on until she calms and they watch the rabbit dart across the path and disappear into the bushes.

Dean unhooks her lead a little while later and experimentally throws the ball Sam’s taken to tucking into the pocket on her vest beside her phone.

She lights up like a firework the second she sees it—lunges after the graying yellow orb and brings it back with a gleeful look on her face.

It’s… surprisingly relaxing.

Castiel finds them about thirty minutes later. Dean can feel him lingering at the tree line behind him, chances a glance over his shoulder and is stunned not to see the angel standing there staring at him. He can FEEL him though, that same electric tingle under his skin and pressure in his chest.

Dean inhales slowly, squints… PUSHES with the grace in his chest.

The world shines like holographic paper at the edges. Smears into dazzling colors. Flashes of people’s souls and the life energy from the earth.

The shape Dean finds is not human. It’s compressed into vaguely human dimensions, but it is thin with a blindingly white corona where its head should be, with a graydim handprint through the middle. There are other scars. More handprints, sweeping shapes like checkmarks or the outer edges of feathers, lines like knife cuts… and something almost like lightning across one shoulder.

Dean knows it’s Castiel. He can FEEL it, doesn’t need the bright shape with the dim familiar scars to KNOW that. It’s the color. Dean hasn’t met an angel yet who was colorful. They’re all just flat, featureless BRIGHTNESS.

Why is Castiel just standing there though, hiding. Why the hell is he invisible? Dean ignores him at first, stealing glances every few minutes while he throws Sputnik’s ball around. Maybe he’s upset that Dean had… had kissed him.

To be honest with himself, he’s not sure why he did it, it just kind of happened automatically. Weirdly enough it had felt kind of good. He’d caught the angel with his lips parted and had only just stopped himself from easing them farther apart with the tip of his tongue.

What if he was here to kill him? Just sneak up all invisible and silent and stab him in the kidney then leave him to lie there and bleed out in the grass with Sputnik waiting for her ball to be thrown again.

It takes ten more minutes, a growing migraine and a jogger tossing a gum wrapper through the angel’s chest for Dean to admit he’d had enough and turn with a pinched expression on his face. “You just gonna stand there or are you going to come say ‘Hello’, Castiel?”

A brief flare of brightness ripples out from the angel’s core and for an instant it appears he’s going to simply vanish— Instead the shape of him seems to lamely glance behind himself, then faces forward again and it’s almost as if he pokes himself in the chest with one finger. _Me?_

“Yeah, you. Any other pissed off angels hangin’ around I should know about?”

Castiel appears, his vessel looking openly surprised. He inflates his chest and warily takes half a step forward. His color flares and Dean becomes aware of a tingling in his follicles. Castiel is Present now, not lingering, he looks exhausted, kind of like he’s had too much coffee and his clothes are more rumpled than normal.

Dean speaks first, simply because it seems like he should; “So –uh—you gonna smite my ass or what?”

He doesn’t speak, blinks rapidly and shakes his head. A peculiar color is inching up from under his collar.

“Okay, you here for a reason or are you just perving on me?”

Castiel flicks his tongue over his lips nervously and looks away, his cheeks are definitely pink now. “I… I was told… I—“ He inhales—it shakes in his chest—“I was told to come and finish what I had started before without alerting you to my presence.”

“What?”

“You weren’t supposed to see me.”

Dean snorted and tapped his temple with two fingers; “Yeah, your Invisible Man act apparently doesn’t work on me.”

“I was afraid of that.”

Dean bent long enough to retrieve the ball from the dog and throw it again, then turned back to Castiel; “So, what exactly are you here to ‘finish’?”

Castiel’s mouth opens and closes. “You’re not supposed to know.”

“Of course not.”

Sputnik comes back, drops her ball and sneezes on it a few times. Dean rolls his lips back but picks it up and throws it again, then wipes his hand clean on his jeans. “Does it have something to do with this grace thing I’ve got in me?”

“In part.”

“Nothing good I take it.”

“Not entirely, no…”

Dean inhaled slowly and let it out, rubbed a palm on his chest; “It has to do with what Zechariah did something to me, doesn’t it.”

Castiel inhales and lets it out slowly, ducks his head to the side and finally meets Dean’s eyes; “Yes.”

Dean nodded, felt his blood pressure rising. “What DID he do to me? I mean, besides turn me into a desk jockey for a month and mess with my digestive system?”

Castiel inhales and lets it out slowly, turns to watch Sputnik return with her ball between her teeth triumphantly; “The barrier put into place to shield the memories of your resurrection was not strong enough—I apologize for that. He reconstructed it.”

“That’s not what I mean… This—this grace. I used to be able to just look at someone and see this—this color of them without even trying. Now it feels like I’ve got a knife in my head hacking away at my brain every time it slips through. He did something to it—“

“Humans are not meant to have grace, Dean. They are too emotional—too unpredictable. That much power at the disposal of something so easily swayed could be disastrous.”

“So, what? He broke it?”

“He extended the barrier within you to encompass it—“

Dean’s face scrunched up in disgust.

“—But you had already realized how to access it and when the ghost of P.T. Sandover attacked you—“

Dean remembered that CRACK and how everything had gone very bright and still around him. “ _I_ broke it, didn’t I.”

Castiel exhaled, “Yes… I was ordered to repair it but I…” He winces, glances left and right then down at Dean’s chest and says nothing more.

Dean crosses his arms, winds Sputnik’s lead around his fist a little more tightly. “Is that what that was? When I heard you in my head? The grace?”

“It was part of me once… it should have burned itself out by now but it hasn’t… It’s taken root in you and flourished—“ He steps closer without even moving, tips his head forward like he’s a six-year-old sharing a secret; “It feels… _wrong_ — to me, to contain it.”

Dean blinks in surprise and tilts his chin toward his chest trying to catch the angel’s eyes. “Then just take the barrier away.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“I cannot remove it.”

“Why?”

“It is shielding you from the memories of your resurrection, Dean. If I take that away I don’t know what would happen.”

“Would it really be a bad thing to remember?”

Castiel’s mouth moves, opens and closes; “I have been told it would be.”

“But you don’t believe that, do you.”

He says nothing, just stares.

Dean wets his lips; “I think I remember you grabbing me in Hell.”

The angel’s head cants a little to the left.

“It—it hurt. A lot. Like I was being burned from the inside out… Then it didn’t hurt anymore. Nothing hurt anymore… And—and I could feel this energy or presence—I’m pretty sure it was you,” He looks away and hunches his shoulders; “It felt really warm whatever it was.”

Castiel squints at him again and Dean can feel the press of him, the brush over his mind, but it pulls back quickly; “The barrier is damaged, it’s possible that some of the memories would leak through the fracture. I wouldn’t suggest prying into it though, it could prove damaging.”

Dean looked down and noticed Sputnik had joined them, was sitting by his foot with her ball in her mouth pawing at the angel’s pants leg in a desperate bid for attention.

Castiel looked down at her as well, then up again quickly; “You and Sam have a demon?”

Dean blinked, looked down at the dog and back at the angel; “Did—did you just talk to—“

“She said a man in smelly shoes came into the house with a demon and that you had a seizure earlier.”

Dean gapes. “Dude—you—you just _talked_ to the _dog.”_

“Of course, you don’t?”

Dean blinked; “She’s a _dog,_ dogs don’t talk.”

“No, humans don’t listen.”

Dean threw up his arms.

“Why did you have a seizure?”

“If I knew that I would do everything I could to avoid doing it again,” He turned and started slowly making his way back toward the car.

Castiel stopped him with a gentle touch to his shoulder and when Dean turned he noticed a tension between the angel’s brows, a hesitance in his hands when the two human ones lifted and pressed to either side of Dean’s head. He stared— Locked eyes with Dean’s and STARED right into him.

Dean could feel his other hands, two delicately coming to rest on his chest, the other two on his shoulders. One near but not touching the scar there—It was unnerving to say the least. He couldn’t look away. “Dude… how many arms do you have?”

“Six.”

Dean spluttered. _“Six?_ H-how come I can only see four of them?”

“Two are internal and in constant prayer configuration…”

“Pra—“

“Quiet.”

Dean’s teeth snapped together.

The touch to his mind was unsettling and as soon as he noticed it he pushed the angel away and rubbed a hand through his hair with a shiver; “Stay outta my head.”

Castiel’s expression was dark, threatening; “You shouldn’t do that, Dean.”

“Do what? Keep you from poking around in my head—”

“You shouldn’t try to use the grace to make weapons.”

Dean’s teeth hurt he’s grinding them so tightly; “We’re trying to find a way to get rid of Lilith. The knife Ruby gave Sam kills them, yeah, but if I can do this, I could power up some bullets. We wouldn’t even have to get close to her.”

Castiel exhales, sounds like one of those haggard school teachers who are about thirty seconds away from yelling at their students. “The risk outweighs the benefit here. A weapon like that can harm more than just demons. In the wrong hands it could _mangle_ souls with as little as one cut.”

Dean feels himself trembling, imagining what Alastair would have done with a knife like that—how close he’d come to scratching into Dean’s chest and TAKING the grace from him. “What?”

“Even a human with a weapon of that magnitude could cause unimaginable destruction. You can’t do this. If the demons got hold of something charged with grace, Dean, they could warp it. They could find a way to kill angels with it.”

Dean felt a slimy cold chill run down his spine; “Castiel… What—what if the demons got me?”

The angel’s face becomes grim, pale and Dean can see the pulse beating quick and nervous in Castiel’s throat. “If the demons managed to compromise you, Dean, there would be no stopping them. The world would burn… And Heaven along with it.”

Dean’s phone rings suddenly and he almost cries out in shock of the noise, fumbles in his pocket and takes some time to breathe before he puts the phone to his ear; “Yeah?” When he looks up again the angel is gone.

Sam’s voice is low, controlled; “You need to see this.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	21. A Sound Like Winter

0-0-0

Shaw is standing on the porch when Dean gets back. His knuckles are bloody and his eyes are wide. Guy looks like he wants a cigarette or a drink. Maybe both.

Dean enters the house slowly, giving Sputnik’s lead a sharp tug because she’s being suddenly obstinate about the stairs.

The girl’s body is still in the chair, her bloody lips are blue and the way her head is sagged unnaturally toward her bloody chest tells Dean that the demon and Tilly are no longer present.

The three knives Dean had attempted to charge are lying on a towel on Bobby’s desk. They look to have melted.

The first—the silver knife—the blade had been dulled visibly, the kitchen knife was melted down to a blackened hilt—but the iron knife was TWISTED, bubbled—like it had been melted and poured into icewater and set in a weird—almost waxen shape.

There was a smell clinging to all of them. Something rotted and sulfuric.

Demon blood—Not what happened to a possessed human’s blood, but actual sticky black DEMON BLOOD.

Bobby was sitting behind his desk with a glass of whiskey. He took his hat off and scratched his head; “Was the damnedest thing… They didn’t kill it, but they hurt it… Smoked outta here so fast the air got hot when Sam exorcised it.”

Dean stared down at the blades with a sour feeling in his stomach.

“What happened to ‘em?”

“That’s what we needed you to look at. Why the hell did they melt?”

Dean wanted to say; ‘Because demons have lava running in their veins,’ but how then, could Ruby’s knife kill a demon and they hadn’t even had to sharpen it yet.

Dean inhaled and met Bobby’s eyes; “I didn’t do it right, that’s why they melted… I—I don’t have the juice to make one strong enough.”

Sam exhaled weightily. “You told me the iron bar you got Alastair with glowed hot in your hands… Did any of these?”

Dean shook his head. “I tried to do it and my head exploded, you saw it.”

“But, WHY?”

Dean looked at him evenly and bared his teeth; “Not now.”

Sam glanced toward the door. Shaw was just outside, if their voices lifted above a certain degree the man would hear them and after the way the Deputy Marshall had thrown his fists into Tilly Rathbone’s face while the demon laughed at him, Sam was of the opinion that the man could go suck eggs. He nodded, let his pent up breath out and crossed his arms; “Well, what do we do about Shaw? He knows we’ve got something for the knives to have done that to a demon. He’s not going to leave until we give him some kind of answer.”

Dean snorted, “Give him some of those bullets I was messing with downstairs. They’ve got about as much juice in them as these did and there won’t be any trace left when they melt.”

Sam looks to Bobby who nods and throws back the rest of his drink with a hiss through bared teeth. “Six, only six.”

Sam nods and goes to get them while Bobby goes to get Shaw.

Dean rubs a hand over his face and picks up the ruined knives. They smell awful and just the feel of them in his hand makes his skin crawl.

Shaw keeps glancing at the corpse then to Dean and the knives when he comes in tailing Bobby. He takes a drink when it’s offered and leans a hip against the desk. Dean doesn’t like the way the man’s color keeps stretching out like tentacles to feel at them, how it stabs hatefully at Sputnik and her own color recoils from him—She ends up sitting behind Dean’s feet staring up at the Deputy Marshall uneasily.

Shaw takes the bullets in reverent hands when Sam presents them. Stares at them with one brow crooked up; “How do I know you all aren’t tryin to pull the wool over my eyes with this bullshit?”

“You brought us the demon to test it on, so we’re kind of in your debt.”

“That don’t mean you ain’t gonna fleece me.”

Bobby narrows his eyes; “You tryin’ to say my boys ain’t honest, Shaw?”

“I’m trying to say, if I had a secret like this I wouldn’t share it with nobody, owing them or not.”

“Well, thank Christ they ain’t you then, ya’ greedy bastard… Take your corpse and get outta here.”

Shaw stuffs the bullets into his pocket and with Sam’s assistance lays the body out on the tarp they’d spread over the floor and rolls her up. He’ll dispose of it as he sees fit, Bobby doesn’t know or trust him enough to offer a shallow hole in his yard and they all know it.

Shaw doesn’t say thank you. Just shuts up his horse trailer and leaves with his pocket jingling full of bullets.

Dean feels strangely—eerily uncomfortable with this fact. It sits sour on his stomach

Sam, at least, has the decency to wait until the smell has aired out and Dean has had something to eat before he asks what the problem is. And when he does there is absolutely no delicacy to it.

“Why don’t you have the juice to charge things anymore?”

Dean’s on the couch, has his computer open on his knees and is playing minesweeper if the little exploding noises he’s making are to be trusted. He looks up at Sam with his mouth open before he seems to reboot his brain and puffs out an irritated breath. “Subtle, nice…”

Sam pulls over Bobby’s desk chair and sits in it, close enough that it’s impossible to ignore him and the blackened edges of his color reach for Dean.

It makes him unsurprisingly uncomfortable.

“Zechariah put a condom over my grace.”

Sam flinches back in disgust. “What?”

He exhales and puts his computer aside; “There’s this bubble alright? Like, shrink wrapping around a bunch of really nasty memories in my head and when Zechariah kidnapped me from the garage he pulled it open and stuffed the grace in there too to keep me from using it.”

Sam shook his head; “Why’d he do that?”

“Because it’s basically like giving a loaded gun to a toddler… At least that’s how Castiel explained it.”

Sam snorted; “He thinks you’re gonna hurt someone?”

“Basically.”

“That—Can’t Castiel like, take the grace out?”

“Nope. It’s granny knotted up in there and the only way it’s coming out is if I break it out.”

“Then what’re you waitin’ for?”

Dean settles his feet a little more firmly against the rug; “Every time I try to use it my head explodes… I—I’m starting to think that it’s what’s causing all the—“ He made a rolling gesture with his hand, “—all the seizures.”

Sam’s expression shifts from annoyed to concerned; “You think the grace is causing the seizures.”

“I felt fine until I tried to charge those things down stairs… I get headaches—Really REALLY nasty headaches when I focus on the… the color of people’s—“ He waves vaguely at Sam’s edges. “And the headaches cause it.”

“Did using the grace cause it before Zechariah—did what he did?”

Dean shook his head; “No… No, it didn’t… I think he did something else to me but Castiel just doesn’t know, or won’t tell me.”

Sam nodded; “So, what’re we going to do about it?”

“Right now? Nothing… We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing and I’ll keep chipping away at this bubble until it doesn’t hurt so much or it pops.”

“But won’t that release those memories?”

Dean pushed up to his feet and rubbed a hand roughly through Sputnik’s ruff; “Can’t be any worse than Hell.”

“You don’t know that, Dean. It could be a lot worse?”

Dean snorted and turned away; “How could remembering being pulled out of Hell be worse than Hell itself?”

0-0-0

Something smells like springtime. Tastes like the first brush of warmth against frozen land…

Dean feels stupidly poetic and wants to laugh. It bubbles up and out like fireworks, disturbs the air like the rippling of heat but has no color.

He’s dreaming…

Dean knows he’s dreaming, it’s just  so long since he’s had a nice dream he doesn’t recognize it for what it is.

This one is quiet, calm.

He’s lying on warm soft sheets in a bed without edges. There’s a window floating about eight feet away and the curtains are blowing like there’s a breeze even though there’s nothing outside it. There are no walls, no floor or ceiling, just softness, warmth—a feeling of being stabilized and unfettered. He feels strangely like he’s being watched through that window, but it’s meaningless. Just a feeling among a sense of stillness and it holds no purpose.

He feels like he’s floating in a large body of warm water, pressure and security on all sides, no responsibilities, no thought, just quiet, peacefulness… _Safety._

There’s a touch, light— _caring._ A smooth gentle friction of fingertips against his jaw.

He’s had this dream before. Weird… Weirder still that as soon as he turns his head to look at who is touching him he wakes up flat on his back in his bed with his knees pulled up and his legs spread under the sheets.

He’s warm and aching between his legs—His left hand is down there and he pulls it away quickly, snaps his legs closed again and tries to control a jag of PANIC that shoots through his chest.

Sam’s snoring, is sprawled on his back in his own too small bed with his head tilted back and his lips parted. It’s a dry irritating sound and Dean throws a pillow at him—“Shuddup,” And he flops onto his side and pulls his legs up tight, worried… What if someone had seen—what if he’d been making noises.

Sam jolts awake with a snort and throws the pillow back with a muttered; ‘asshole’ and wipes drool from the corner of his mouth, then presents his back.

Dean doesn’t go back to sleep. He nudges Sputnik where she’s curled up at the foot of his bed until she wakes up and grudgingly waddles up to curl in the bend of his legs. The heavy small presence of her is reassuring in a way he’s unfamiliar with. It takes close to thirty minutes for the ache between his thighs to subside and the heat to fade. He spends most of that time with his hands tangled in his hair or around his chest fighting to breathe and push down memories of Alastair wearing his Cas’s face.

Bobby makes bacon and eggs for breakfast and Dean slips the dog some under the table, ignores the disapproving looks Sam gives him over a glass of orange juice.

“Found you boys a hunt,” Bobby sits down and dabs toast into his eggs; “It ain’t much, but it’s gotta be done, fast.”

Sam nods, stuffs more bacon in his mouth; “Go on.”

“Mukilteo Washington… Over the week three men disappear and wash up on the shore drowned with their eyeballs gone and some of their teeth missing. One of them had his fingers and toes half eaten, but that could have been gulls, he was kinda bloated when they found him. Weird thing was all three of these guys were strong swimmers and the tide was out at the time they disappeared.”

“So, what’re you thinkin’?” Dean’s got a mouthful of toast and one hand under the table letting Sputnik nibble the crusts.

“If I could find a connection between the three I’d say curse, but as far as I can tell, there’s nothing. Hunter, MacGuenty and Rollins, a school principal, a fisherman and a garbage man,” He hands over a few sheets of paper to Sam.

Sam flips through them; “What’s the rush?”

“Three victims in five days… Nothing’s been reported yet, but if whatever it is keeps this up someone else coulda’ got nabbed last night… I’ve got someone keeping an eye on the police reports, but he’s in no shape to deal with this kind of thing.”

“No?”

“He’s almost eighty, last thing he needs is to be hauling his walker up and down the sea shore.”

Dean scooped the last of his breakfast between his teeth and jerked his chin up, “Yeah, come on, Sammy. Give the octogenarian some respect!”

Sam rolls his eyes, but they’re on the road before ten, he gives Dean a funny look when he catches him tucking a fishing pole into the trunk. Dean just shrugs and slides behind the wheel; “Three hours, that’s all I’m askin.”

Sam rolls his eyes.

Dean gets five hours because Sam falls asleep halfway through Leftoverture side B with Sputnik on his lap watching the scenery passing.

Late lunch and Sam takes the wheel.

Dean dreams of hooks in his skin, Spiders and chewing awful teeth, wakes up sweating with his fingers tangled in his clothes and Sam shaking his shoulder.

He doesn’t go back to sleep.

Mukilteo is a small town, quaint. Reminds Dean vaguely of those New England towns with the fantastic food he remembers from his early twenties. All the long legged women with _sensibilities_ and leather harnesses in their bedrooms. He remembers Rhonda Hurley and a smile curls his lips, even while a sickened shiver runs through him.

Fuck it all.

Part of him resolves to find an amenable woman and get himself properly laid, but at the same time he remembers having that exact mentality in Canonsburg and how humiliating that ended up being. It’s not about sex, really it’s not. He just—he just wants to forget for a while and it had always worked in the past… But he knows now it won’t anymore and he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Sam makes him wear that ridiculous hat Bobby made him. It’s warm and thick and kind of an ashy gray-blue color, it reminds him of deep water and when he looks in the car mirror to adjust it so he doesn’t look like such an idiot all he can see are fucking SPOTS across his face and big eyes and he wants to throw the thing into the back for the dog to roll on, but Sam gives him a look; “Would you rather have a helmet?”

“Dude,” He grinds his teeth, “You are not allowed to use the internet to look up stuff again—“

Sam rolls his eyes.

“I’m not gonna just drop, Sam,” But he wears the hat anyway, hates it—but can’t stand people staring at the scars still visible through his hair. Maybe… Maybe if he let it grow out a little on the sides it wouldn’t bother him so much.

Bobby was right, there was a fourth victim. Bethesda Gaines, thirty-four. She looks to have been very pale, even in life, with thin, brittle, white-blonde hair, plaited back tight to her skull—Sam says its likely she wore a wig from the design in the braiding and the coroner confirms that she did, but it hadn’t washed up with the body. The Police are thinking suicide, but Sam and Dean see the same thing on the body. Her eyes are gone, plucked clean from her head like grapes. All of her teeth are gone, but it looks to have been a while since they were there, the Medical Examiner explains Mrs. Gaines had a vitamin deficiency and hadn’t had her own teeth since she was in her early twenties… That she and her husband Ralph had been trying to get pregnant for the last ten years and she had suffered a number of miscarriages and recently—the most devastating—a stillbirth. Ralph had apparently been arrested earlier in the week for drunken misconduct and Beth had been all alone in that big house of theirs. Poor girl.

Sputnik growls at the body, backs away and tries to pull Dean out of the room. She becomes even more agitated when the other three bodies are pulled from their drawers going so far as to snap at Sam when—after touching one—he reaches for her.

Dean takes her outside. He won’t admit it, but corpses without eyeballs freak him out.

Sam comes out thirty minutes later with a file in his hand, he reads from it as Dean drives;

“Each of the victims were drained of most if not all their blood through what looks like a set of three puncture wounds in the groin area—femoral artery—The cause of death in each case was drowning, or in Bethesda’s case, a brain aneurism. There was a substantial amount of water in her lungs though, her airway had frozen ‘Open’ when she’d hit the water. But, get this. There was ‘mucus’ in her eye sockets.”

Dean rolled his nose up and made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat.

Sam shook out the autopsy report and started reading; “’Upon retracting the lids I encountered a thick gray oily discharge with a mucus like texture. I have sent some of the substance to the lab in Everett for analysis… Upon re-examining the other three bodies I found similar material in the sinus and ears. Perhaps it is a chemical residue or unknown contaminant from the sea water. I have taken samples from each victim and sent them for analysis as well… However considering the evidence and lack of bruising I must conclude Mrs. Gaines’ cause of death drowning-suicide,’” Sam closed the file and turned to Dean with a pleased smirk.

“Okay,” Dean flipped his fingers; “What am I supposed to notice?”

“The bruising he’s talking about is a hand shaped mark on the wrist or ankle of the victim. Bethesda Gaines was wearing a night gown when she drowned and running shoes. Her nightgown was torn, maybe something grabbed it.”

“Or maybe it got caught on something when she was floating around?”

Sam let out a put-upon sigh and turned back to the papers in his hands; “What I don’t understand why was she by the water in the first place? Why not just swallow a handful of sleeping pills? It’s a lot less painful.”

Dean snorted in agreement; “Yeah. Faster too.”

“So, why was she there?”

“To kill herself?”

Sam inhaled and let it out, “If that’s so why was there mucus in her eye sockets?”

Dean made another groaning disgusted noise; “Can we please stop talking about the mucus?”

Sam rolled his eyes; “Fine, the GOO, was there. We’ve seen drowning victims before, they don’t fill up with goo.”

“So, what, you’re thinking ectoplasm?”

“Maybe,” He pulled out a sample vial from his pocket and unsealed the baggie. He didn’t open it, just held it up to the sun and stared at it; “It doesn’t exactly look like ectoplasm though… it looks biological.”

“Gross… You mean, like snot or somethin’?”

“No, snot isn’t greasy like this.”

“Aw, jeez… It’s not—it’s not…” He made a fluttering gesture with his fingers, “—is it?”

Sam made the gesture back; “What the hell is that supposed to mean.”

Dean looked vaguely embarrassed; “It’s not sex stuff, is it?”

“Jesus, it’s not cum, Dean…”

“No, I mean, it’s not lady sex stuff—“

Sam snorted, “No… It—it looks almost like eel mucus.”

“Again with the mucus.”

“But I’ve never seen eel mu—GOO, so oily.”

“Mutant oil eel?”

“That wouldn’t explain the hand shaped bruises though.”

Dean wobbled his head thoughtfully; “Mermaids?”

“Sam choked out a laugh; “Please.”

He shrugged; “Pissed off Ariel’s sounding more and more like a possibility.”

“This is Puget Sound, Dean… We’re more likely to be up against kracken than a mermaid.”

“Okay, so whatever this thing is, its water based. All the vics are snatched by the water and drowned.”

Sam’s looking through the pages again, “Could be a water spirit.”

“Any water spirits eat peoples eyeballs?”

“No, but, that could have been the gulls.”

Dean nods, “Then what about the goo?”

“I don’t know.”

Dean nods again, “Alright, new plan… we comb the waterfront for clues, check out the areas where the bodies washed up and see if Sputs here smells anything like she did at the morgue.”

Sam’s nose wrinkles up; “Sputs?”

Dean blinks at him.

“Dean, I know you don’t exactly like her—“

“What? Yes, I do. When did I say I didn’t like her?” 

“Uh, like five times at Bobby’s and about a dozen on our way back from Cincinnati.”

Dean balked— and looked away.

The Silver Cloud Inn was a lot nicer than Dean had thought it would be. Well kept, clean and best of all, waterfront adjacent. Not to mention the fantastic restaurants within walking distance. The Ferry going in and out was a little annoying, but it couldn’t be helped.

They spent the rest of the evening digesting and pouring over town records of deaths dating back fifty-four years. So far there were no more frequent drowning deaths than any town this close to water. None of them mentioned corpses with their eyes and teeth missing… at least not in Mukilteo.

“Two months ago there were five deaths in Cultus Bay, just to the west and it continues like that in costal towns for the past year all the way to northern California,” Sam motions out the hotel window. “Same MO… Only in Maxwelton, there was a witness! Jane Valliant, fifty-nine. She and her husband were walking along the beach after dinner when they heard a baby crying near the water… Her husband went to check it out and never came back. His body washed up three days later,” Sam is pouring over the rest of the newspaper articles from the other deaths.

“Baby crying?” Dean’s eyebrows pull down, “Hey, Sam? What if Bethesda heard a baby crying? I mean, poor woman’s already lost how many? Her husband’s in jail? That’d rattle anybody.”

“So you don’t think she killed herself?”

Dean shrugged one shoulder, “No, I still think she went there to punch her own clock, but this could have distracted her. Could be worth looking in to… I mean, any grieving mother, no matter how self destructive, would at least worry about a crying baby, wouldn’t they? One in her position might just go see what was going on.”

Dean had a point. He usually did. “The three other victims… They were all fathers, Rollins was divorced, but they’d all been around babies.”

“Weak, but it’s a connection.”

“Okay, so a ghost or spirit that cries like an infant to lure its victims close, then it drowns them… Sound familiar to you?”

Dean’s lips were pursed and he had his eyes on his own computer screen. He types something, taps his feet while it searches and Sam is just levering himself up to go to the bathroom when Dean’s arms pop up and his expression bursts outward into something almost jovial.

“Son of a bitch!” He points; “I found it!”

Sam blinks in surprise; “You found it?”

“Ahuizotl!”

“Gesundheit.”

“Fuck you, just get over here and look at this thing. I actually found it before you did,” He turns his computer around to display the screen. “Drowns its victims and eats their eyes, teeth and nails.”

Sam’s nose wrinkles up, “Ugh.”

“You’re just jealous I found it before you did,” Dean waves him off and continues reading, pulls out his phone and calls Bobby.

“What do you know about Ahuizotl?”

“What?”

He spells it. “Damned if I can pronounce it right… Uh-hooey-zotyl?”

“Spelling suggests Myan, maybe Aztec…” Bobby lets out an exasperated sigh. “I got no idea what it is, give me a minute,” He knocks books around flips pages, punches in something to his computer, flips through more books.

Dean reads the article he came across aloud and Sam comes back out of the bathroom to help.

“Ahuizotl are creatures, not spirits… I’ve never heard of anything like this that far north. They’re mainly found in lakes and water filled caves near temples and shrines built to Tlaloc. It’s said that their victims go on to _Tlalocan_ , or Paradise to serve him for eternity. Nasty bastards apparently, cry like babies when they’re hungry to lure people close then grab them with the hand on their tails and drown them. Drink their blood and eat their eyes… They save the crunchy parts for last though, like their candy.”

Dean’s nose wrinkled up, “Nasty.”

“Boys, I don’t have much Aztec lore that isn’t associated with the Countdown Calendar. I’m gonna have to call in a few favors and get back to you… My best advice is, don’t get too close to the thing.”

“I think Sputnik can smell it. She got a whiff of something off the bodies and tried to run for it.”

“Okay then, listen to the rat. If she says get goin’ get GOING.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Dean scrolled through the article and let out a huff of breath; “Any idea on what might kill it?”

“Not the slightest… I’d say since it’s pulling people into the ocean that salt isn’t going to hurt it… Try iron and silver rounds, might at least wing the damned thing long enough that you can get away from it.”

Sam leaned closer and folded his hands together, “Thanks, Bobby.”

“Yeah, just don’t get yourselves killed by some handsy mutt, got it?” And he hung up.

Knowing what they were looking for was probably half the worry about a case. Once they’d found out what they were up against, they had to find out how to kill it, or in some cases relocate it. There wasn’t a chance of relocating this thing though. Ahuizotl killed people, most usually young children according to Bobby, but they took adults when there weren’t children plentiful to grab.

They set off just after the tide goes out. Recon, Dean called it. Just looking around and hoping nobody else got dragged off like the last few nights.

The wind coming off the water is still bitter cold, even for April and Dean doesn’t begrudge the hat when Sam tosses it to him. Sputnik shivers weakly as they walk the beach along the waterfront. There aren’t many people around. A jogger or two dressed in reflective tracksuits. Or a guy on a bicycle. There’s a security guard and a couple teenagers sharing quick drinks from a coke can filled with booze.

The water is pulled back and all sorts of interesting features can be seen off the edge of the dock. Rocks and tide pools, sand bars and old stumps. There are some people sneaking out with buckets and trowels looking to dig up their supper.

Dean and Sam walk for a while, listen for any weird sounds, ask passers-by if they’ve heard anything unusual in the area, flash their FBI badges and make up stories about an animal that’s been attacking people at the water’s edge. That its cry sounds almost like an infant’s.

Dean’s headed north, Sam’s gone south, the wind is getting worse and Sam’s face is almost numb. The police haven’t said anything about another disappearance. Nobody’s heard anything.

Sam’s made it down to the lighthouse and Dean’s almost to the old pier when the tide officially starts coming back in. There hasn’t been a single peep from the Ahuizotl that they’ve seen. Only morning will tell.

“Yeah, I got nothing,” Dean says, he gives a loud wet snuff, “You had to keep saying mucus, didn’t you.”

“Sorry about that,” Sam hunches his shoulders in his coat, “Look, I’m gonna stick around, ask some folks coming off the ferry if they’ve heard or seen anything, I’ll meet you at that—what was it? That bar near the hotel.”

“Dude, why do you have to—“

“I’ll buy you a beer if you promise no driving tomorrow.”

“Two—“

“One and no driving.”

Dean grumbles and hangs up, it’s as close to an agreement as Sam’s going to get. He’s just coming up the boat ramp into the parking lot when he hears it. Innocuous. Not a baby crying, nothing really out of the ordinary, just some woman cursing vilely at her car.

She’s parked in the triangular shaped lot to his right and savagely pulling on the door handle. Stomping booted feet and pulling some more.  “Son of a bitch, David. I’ll never fucking forgive you for this!” Finally she gives up, lets out a sob and sinks to the ground with her back against the car door.

He waits until he’s close enough not to have to yell to speak, but doesn’t try to walk softly so she knows he’s coming. “Everything OK?”

She looks up at him with her lips rolled back and curls her hands into fists.

She’s pretty, dark, curly short hair and dark eyes under a thick fringe of lashes. Sam pulls out his ID and flashes it at her and she seems to relax thinking he must be harmless if he works for the government. “I locked my keys in my car… and my asshole ex is not answering his phone.

Sam nods, gives the car a once over and clears his throat; “My br—partner’s got a slim jim… He can open it up for you if you’re willing to wait a few minutes.”

She chuckled and motioned to the asphalt beside her. “Pull up a few square feet, Agent—“

“Uh—Angus. Sam Angus.”

She nods, holds out her hand; “Trina… Tree if you feel like it.”

“Tree?”

She pushed herself up to her feet and crossed her arms over her thin chest.

Sam had been around tall women before, but this was probably the first time he’d come close to seeing one eye to eye. “Okay, Tree. Got it.”

She leaned her hips against the hood of her car and scuffed the toe of her boot against the ground; “So, about that slim jim?”

Sam fumbled in his coat pocket and dialed Dean, told him the situation, “Ninety-eight Grand Prix, keys locked inside,” then relayed a more polite message of ascent instead of Dean’s vulgarity enshrouded annoyance.

Trina was a thin willowy woman, almost androgynous in shape save the pitch of her voice and color smeared on her eyelids. She was not what one would call traditionally beautiful, seeming almost bird like in her green wool coat and the long, slightly downward tilt to her nose. She licked her lips compulsively, nervously and kept her arms crossed over her chest. Spoke little but seemed to see a lot.

“What are two FBI agents doing in Mukilteo?”

Sam stayed a good distance away, leaned against her trunk and kept his hands in his pockets; “We have reason to believe the recent drownings may be intentional.”

“You mean like murders?”

“More like animal related.”

Trina’s eyebrows shot up and she blinked but didn’t say anything else about it. Instead she focused across the parking lot at the railway and a passing length of cars. “You don’t look like an FBI agent.”

Sam chuckled, tried not to sound nervous. “What do I look like then?”

“Right now? Uncomfortable.”

“Oh? You psychic?”

“No. I’m a psychology major.”

Sam nods, “A psychology major working as a tour guide at a lighthouse?”

“Now, who’s psychic?”

Sam hunched one shoulder toward his ear; “You’re here late, nobody else around and there are keys in your pocket but not your car keys. Logical conclusion, you’re either a cat burglar or closing up shop.”

“If I were a cat burglar do you really think I’d be driving a Pontiac with a bad muffler?”

“Depends on if you’re good at it or not. If you’re good at it nobody’s going to notice what kind of car you drive.”

She let out a soft snort of amusement; “I’d say you were being cocky but I have a feeling you’d know.”

“Unfortunately.”

Dean shows up about then grumbling, with Sputnik in the front seat prancing around and yapping happily, leaving wet nose prints on the glass. She’s got one of Sam’s extra scarves wound around he  little body and tied at the back of her neck and her paws are still a little damp even after Dean had dried them off.

Trina seems amused by the dog, coos at her through the window while Dean slides the slim jim between the passenger window and the weather strip. It’s a quick movement, slide over and pull up—Pop, the door’s open and Trina looks almost like she’d be willing to kiss someone... almost. Instead she says polite, curt thankyou’s, climbs behind the wheel and leaves.

Dean gives him a smirk. The Smirk and they move on to the restaurant.

Dean gets two beers. He flirts halfheartedly at the server, a brunette with long hair pulled back into a braid and a tight shirt. Sam orders a pizza and they spend an hour eating and brainstorming while Dean sneaks Sputnik bits of crust and some of the meat he can’t stomach. It’s a friendly atmosphere, energetic with music they can both enjoy. It reminds Sam vaguely of the Tavern in Canonsburg but less kitschy.

Sputnik tries to eat peanut shells and almost gets choked.

The police don’t call. Nobody goes missing that night. Sam drives back to the hotel and lets Dean have a shower while he takes the dog for a walk on the peer. When he comes back Dean is sprawled on his stomach shirtless in just his underwear across his bed mumbling to Bobby over his phone.

Sam takes the phone so Dean can sleep, pulls the dog with him into the bathroom for her weekly bath and puts the older hunter on speaker with the volume turned low while he scrubs Sputnik down.

Ahuizotl don’t travel up this far naturally and salt water is bad for them, so it’s likely the reason this one is feeding so often is because it’s sick, its desperate to get out of the salt water and into fresh water. They’re not used to the cold so it’s unlikely it’s _staying_ in the water. It would need somewhere damp and closed off and warm to be able to survive.

“This ain’t a spirit, it’s an animal. Likely a very intelligent animal, but an animal none the less. It’ll be looking for someplace cave like and warm and close to the water to hide in. And if it is sick, you boys better watch your backs—and the rat’s.”

Sam nods and works soap deeply into Sputnik’s chest and belly to get out all the sand. “We will. Any idea of how to kill it yet?”

“Not yet. I got a guy working on a translation, something to do with a cousin of these things, you may have heard of it. The direct translation of it is ‘High-backed grass wolf’.”

“A what?”

“You probably know it as a Moss Dog?”

Sam swallowed; “Yeah, I may have heard of it… What’s that got to do with anything? Moss Dogs aren’t aquatic.”

“Yeah, but they’ve got similar killing style. They eat the eyes and have the same fifth appendage on their tails. Even cry like babies to attract prey. I know how to kill them, but I don’t know if it’ll work on your Ahuizotl.”

“Well, until we know for sure, it’s worth a shot.”

“You can kill Moss Dogs with beheading and fire if you can get close enough without getting grabbed by one or worse bit. Their saliva is like a leech’s its anticoagulant. You get bit by one you won’t stop bleeding for a good long while and if it’s a severe bite you’re likely to bleed to death… Then you got poisoning them with the blood of an eagle on a silver knife.”

“Yeah, eagle blood, we’ll get right on that—“

Bobby snorted; “Let’s hope it’s simpler than that.”

Sputnik sneezed in Sam’s face when he was rinsing her and he groused about it then helped her out of the tub and began scrubbing her dry with towels; “Hey, Bobby?”

“Still here.”

“Can you get Dean’s prescription if we’re not back by Friday? He has enough to last until Monday, but…”

“Like you gotta even ask,” He sighs tiredly, “Well, I’ll call you if that translation works through any faster. Don’t do anything too stupid.” 

0-0-0

It’s a pretty open and shut case after Bobby gets back to them the following afternoon with means of killing the Ahuizotl. Blood of a bird (any bird apparently, Moss Dogs included, Eagle just seemed more majestic than ‘random bird’ in Navajo) on a gold knife, not silver. Which meant bad news for Sam and Dean who would have to get close enough to stab the thing… _and_ they had to catch a bird to bleed—

“Chicken blood maybe? We could just go to a butcher.”

“Chickens aren’t necessarily ‘birds’ they’re poultry. I’d hate to screw this up because of a technicality,” Sam is driving, scanning the sky and surrounding area as they creep past.

“So, what’re you thinking? Break into some guy’s house and stick a syringe into the parrot?”

“No… I’m thinking one of those,” He points up to a seagull perched on a light pole surveying a line of cars beneath it for prime pooping territory.

“A seagull? You expect us to catch and syringe a seagull?”

“You got a better idea?”

“Yeah, the parrot thing is sounding better and better—“

“Dean—“

“Fine, how exactly do you think we’re going to catch one?”

“Sputnik…”

“Sputnik? How is she going to catch a seagull and not get carried off by one like a cell phone?”

Sam snorted and found a place to park, “After lunch I say we find out.”

Lunch was… eventful, to say the least.

“Agent Angus… I think you might be stalking me,” It was that girl from the night before. She was standing outside Arnie’s with a foam cup of coffee.

Sam chuckled and twirled the keys on his finger, Dean elbowed him in the side and waggled his eyebrows then guided the dog off toward the grass for a preemptive potty-break.

Dean watched. Sam rolled his shoulders and shook his head, laughed and flapped his hand as he talked. The woman smiled and looked up at him through her lashes, shifted her weight to one hip and picked a dog hair off his shirtfront.

“Get some, Sammy…” Dean snorted and turned back to the dog; “Look at that. He’s tryin’ to get laid.”

Sputnik ‘woofed’ up at him around her teeth, seemed to approve of it and sat to watch.

Dean didn’t say anything until they’d taken a seat inside, then it was a suggestive look and a waggle of his eyebrows. “I may have to try that sometime. Being the Good Samaritan seems to pay off!”

“Shut up,” Sam turned to the menu and refused to look up. His face was red.

In the end it took three days to find the Ahuizotl. One of which Dean an Sam spent low tide on the shore with sputnik chasing seagulls and trying to hide from police who didn’t want them to be doing such things considering they were supposed to be FBI agents.

It’s Dean that manages to catch a seagull by watching from the pier above and dropping his hat over one’s head while Sam hid himself behind a support.

They are damned noisy things, Seagulls and the dog had it in her head now that any time she saw one she was to lunge at it and snarl like a thing possessed.

“Okay, that’s it… You are going to obedience school,” Dean reeled in her lead one last time.

Bird blood in possession Dean went about finding a gold knife. A pawn shop in Everett seemed to be the best bet and he took the Impala and left Sam with an evening to himself. Dean didn’t see his brother again until late that night when he received a hushed rasping call;

“We found the Ahuizotl… It’s at the lighthouse. Get over here NOW, I can’t find Trina!”

Dean leaves Sputnik safely locked in the car, but it doesn’t stop her from yipping excitedly and leaving a foamy dogspit mess all over the windows trying to escape to get to them.

The interior of the lighthouse is like just about any other. Dean is of the opinion that if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. There are displays and walls of text and pictures. They search every nook and cranny of the place, but can’t find Trina anywhere.

Sam is becoming frantic. He hides it well, but it shows in the manic motion of his hands and the quickening of his pace. Dean gets it, he does. This shit always seems to happen to Sam and it isn’t right.

They go back outside and scour the grounds.

“Dean!” He says it hushed in a snap and Dean turns and jogs over to see what his brother’s found.

The Ahuizotl has left large clawed hand shaped footprints in sticky gray ooze on the sidewalk. Dean slips in the ooze on the grass as he comes up to Sam’s left and goes down onto his butt with an undignified grunt, but nobody’s laughing so he picks himself up, growls in disgust at the mess on his jeans and tries to avoid any further mishaps but tracking isn’t going to be a problem anymore because Trina’s screaming somewhere off to the west—Close.

It’s about the size of a Great Dane, emaciated and missing clumps of its greasy fur. It smells heavily like fish and damp and rot and screams like a child when it realizes it’s cornered, the hand on its tail doesn’t give up though. TWISTING, WRENCHING at Trina’s leg until the bone snaps. It’s a saving grace really that Trina had managed to hook her arms around the pier railing or else she would have been pulled into the depths.

Sam doesn’t hesitate, drops to his knees by her side and points toward the Ahuizotl, eyes locked on Dean’s; “GO!”

It’s freeing. Hell it’s AWESOME! In that moment there are no memories of Hell, no headaches, no fear of what Zechariah did to him. There is no pressure beyond catching that THING and killing it.

Dean doesn’t think until he’s already running, crashing into the waves and grabbing the thing’s tail… He doesn’t think until the hand appendage on the end of it wraps around his forearm and the water is ICYLIKEDEATHHOLYFUCKOHJESUSITHURTS closing around him.

Dean doesn’t think as the pressure builds—he just acts. Thrusts the knife in his fist forward into firm—yielding flesh again and again and again and the Ahuizotl lurches, twists and comes at him all teeth in the darkness.

 0-0-0

Maybe it would have been different if he hadn’t been so thrilled to just be TRUSTED to do his fucking JOB without incident again, maybe he wouldn’t have hesitated when Sam faltered and dropped by Trina’s side. Maybe if he hadn’t he would have been able to catch and stab the thing before it got to the water’s edge, but he didn’t… Now he’s soaking wet in frigid temperatures and dragging the limp heavy corpse of an Aztec water monster out of Puget Sound attached to his wrist and Sammy’s yelling—screaming—and Jesus he’s wet too. What the hell kind of messed up bullshit case is this?

Things are hazy for a while. Sam slaps him a few times and he feels like maybe that should be a big deal but at the moment nothing really matters. He got the monster. Mukilteo and the surrounding area are safe again. Trina’s broken leg will heal, Sam—from the hickey glowing purplered on his throat—got himself laid and—

He wakes up in Everett General Hospital the next afternoon swaddled in warm blankets.

Sam’s sitting up in his own bed looking pale and frayed. He’s wearing an ugly gray sweat suit with a hood, waves tiredly and smiles; “We need to get outta here fast.”

Hypothermia is no laughing matter, especially for epileptics but they don’t really have a choice. The hospital staff is going to find out REAL FAST that they’re not actually FBI.  Sam’s gained a hat of his own from somewhere. It’s got a light house on it. Dean thinks maybe Trina gave it to him and they creep out without being noticed, take the train back to Mukilteo, pick up the Impala and pack up their room all within an hour and a half.

“We’re gonna get sick because of this. I hope you know that,” Dean shifts uncomfortably in his seat and lets the dog nose her way into his lap, she’s strangely eager to be in contact with him at all times now.

“Well, I wasn’t going to let you drown,” Sam’s voice is rough and his eyes are all squinty.

“Well, we both wound up icicles, your girl got her leg broken by an immigrant monster and Sputnik peed in the back seat—You’re cleaning that up by the way—“

“You left her in the car—“

“So she wouldn’t get eaten!”

Sam shakes his head and is opening his mouth to complain when there’s a ringing noise from the glove compartment.

Dean blinks, rubs his face and reaches for it.

Sam blinks; “Isn’t that Dad’s phone?”

Dean waves at him and puts it to his ear; “Hello?”

It’s a guy’s voice. Young, maybe around Sam’s age, perhaps a year or two younger.

“Is this John?”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

 


	22. Dark Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my internet is being slow if the second chapter doesn't go up tonight ill get it up asap.
> 
> (pun intended)

Bobby’s not pleased by the early hour, even less so when all Sam does is bang on the door, wake him up and run off with Dean’s medication and a bag of sandwiches and twinkies, but he accepts the answer Sam offers him about this ‘Adam Milligan’ kid and doesn’t complain.

 

Dean does. He complains a lot.

 

They’re back on the road within thirty minutes and Dean’s practically fuming.

 

It takes a little more than three hours to get to Windom and the whole way Dean has his mouth clamped tightly shut and a vein bulging on his temple.

 

Sputnik dozes between them on the bench, her head on Sam’s thigh twitching with soft dog dreams and thumping Dean’s leg with her tail.

 

Sam’s exhausted. Rubs his face and chokes down two of those caffeine pills he bought at the gas station a while back. Dean doesn’t like it when he takes them, not that either of them are exactly stimulant virgins, but Sam gets snarky when he’s running on no sleep and too much caffeine.

 

Dean gets Sputnik’s harness snapped on her and winds Sam’s scarf around her chest and neck, contemplates how weird it would be to buy a dog sweater and leads the way into the diner.

 

Uncle Oliver’s Hilltop Café is the same as every other diner they’ve eaten in. It smells the same, the chairs feel the same, the utensils are wrapped the same. Even the waitress smiles at them the same.

 

It’s all a little too much and when the server’s eyes flick up from Sputnik to the scars on his head Dean decides he’s had just about enough. He snaps at her, gives the older men at the counter acidic glares when they look over at them warily and he doesn’t care. He really, really doesn’t care—Even when a headache slips like a stiletto blade through his eye and back into his head and everyone around him flares with color it just makes him angrier.

 

Sam grabs his wrist when he’s wrapping silver cutlery in the extra napkin; “Stop it.”

 

Dean jerks out of his grip and finishes his little counter trap.

 

Sam rubs his forehead and lets Dean continue, tries to appease him by talking softly, carefully. He explains about the journal entry, the missing pages. Reiterates what his research about Adam had concluded.

 

“I mean, Dad would be gone for weeks at a time and he wasn’t exactly a monk!” Sam rolls his eyes emphatically; “I mean, a hunter rolls into town, kills a monster, saves the girl… sometimes—“ He lets the sentence hang, bites his lip and nods his head to the side enough that Dean can see the mark on his neck.

 

Dean thinks maybe he’s bragging a little, but then again, he isn’t lying. As much as Dean doesn’t want to hear it, is disgusted with the idea of their dad having sex or ‘slipping one pass the goalie’ not that he hadn’t accidentally walked in on his dad once when he was about sixteen. It’s not something that he wants to think about, not something he EVER will want to think about, especially since he knows damned well he and Sam had once _been_ the things to slip past the goalie— And isn’t that just absolutely fucked up—Jesus Christ I think I’m gonna puke.

 

 

Adam is brown.

 

That’s the first thing Dean notices.

 

Where everyone around them is a bright color, Adam is not. He’s brown. Not chocolate brown, not soft warm brown… Adam is brown like sick earth or old blood. Dean can’t look away. The men at the counter are light, one green one purple. The elderly couple in the opposite corner are light blue, merged together until they glow BRIGHT where they touch. But everyone is subdued, calm. Colorful.

 

The server, Denise, is yellow, like ginger ale with little streaks of grass green. She shines bright when she approaches, her color reaches out to Adam’s like it has with the other patrons, but where the others had reciprocated, had melded at their edges into warm rainbow hues, Adam does not. He doesn’t even seem to react at all even if he speaks and gesticulates like he does.

 

Sputnik backs up under Dean’s chair, lowers her head and GROWLS when Adam sits down.

 

Sam’s back straightens and he speaks carefully, leans back a little and casts Dean a sideways look, then glances down toward the dog warily and back.

 

The holy water does nothing. The silver does nothing.

 

Adam is not a demon, nor is he a shapeshifter… But he’s not normal. That much is obvious.

 

The only time Adam’s color seems to react at all is when Dean leans forward and calls him a liar, reveals himself and Sam as John’s sons. The brown flickers with red streaks, brighter than Sam’s red, more like poppies and roses than Sam’s dark crimson. But it’s close… It’s close enough that Dean wonders if this whole brown-ness isn’t just like depression or something. Isn’t a defensive mechanism. But then Sputnik growls again and Adam blinks curiously and leans to the side to peer under the table, still chewing; “You’ve got a dog?”

 

Dean swallows a lump growing in his neck.

 

Adam smiles; “She probably smells Jasmine on me…” He looks up when Sam quirks an eyebrow at him; “My girlfriend’s cat,” He leans to the side again to look at her and Dean thinks the smile Adam gives the dog is somehow unpleasant.

 

Dean’s skin crawls.

 

0-0-0

 

The Milligan house is a two story Victorian. It’s neat, well kept, seems a little chilly inside but that’s normal for older houses, Dean’s come to realize.

 

Adam talks, how he and dad had done this, how he and dad had done that. He talks about his mother, her work, how she called him every night at school to see how he was doing. Adam talked about baseball games, fourth of July fireworks, birthdays and phone calls.

 

All Dean can think about is how Dad had completely forgotten his birthday three years in a row. Sam had been little, hadn’t really understood the whole concept of birthdays yet. Dean remembered sitting in the back of the car huddled in one of Dad’s coats with baby Sammy waiting for Daddy to come back. How it had gotten dark and started snowing and he’d been able to see his breath. Remembers that was the year Dad glared at him and leaned back over the seat with blood splattered on his face and an angry intensity in his eyes and told him to shut his mouth that big boys don’t cry goddammit.

 

Dean can’t look at Adam without thinking about the fact Dad had said Bobby teaching him to throw a ball around was a waste of time. How he had taken Dean’s enthusiasm for it and warped it into laziness—selfishness.

 

Dean kind of hated Adam a little bit, kind of wanted there to be something very—very wrong with him because it—it just wasn’t fair.

 

Sputnik doesn’t like being in the house, pulls and draws back on her lead to the point that Dean takes her outside for a while, lets her do her business on the lawn and has to physically carry her inside because she pulls her ‘no I’m afraid of stairs’ routine and he’s just flatly had enough of it.

 

Adam’s in the kitchen when Dean comes back in, he’s waiting for the coffee pot to stop dripping and motions to it when he meets Dean’s eyes; “Want some?”

 

“Can’t.”

 

“Can’t? You allergic or something?”

 

Dean grinds his teeth; “Caffeine doesn’t mix well with the medication.”

 

Adam narrows his eyes and glances at Sputnuk’s quietly snarling face where Dean’s got her held under his arm like a football or something then back to Dean, scans him quickly head to toe and levels a finger at Sputnik; “Now it makes sense.”

 

 “What?”

 

Adam fills his mug; “Well, you’re not visually impaired, you and Sam whisper too much for it to be an auditory thing. Caffeine doesn’t really affect the type of diabetes you would have given you’re not overweight, so … I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume a seizure disorder… Recent because you went to the driver’s side door of the car but Sam had the keys.”

 

Dean blinks, taken aback; “How’d you know that?”

 

“Pre-med… It’s kind of in the curriculum.”

 

Dean puts the dog down and rocks back to his full height, arms over his chest.

 

“What’s her name?”

 

He’s tempted to give him the whole acronym, but decides against it. “Sputnik.”

 

Adam nods, seems to have run out of energy to continue the small-talk and scratches his head. He tells Dean what he’d told the police. How he’d found his mother’s room. Dean asks if he can go up and have a look, Adam shrugs and takes another drink of his coffee.

 

Sputnik won’t go up the stairs. She plants her furry butt on the rug in the hall and refuses to move, even when Dean pulls on her lead. He curses at her under his breath, tosses the strap down and goes to investigate on his own.

 

There are no hex bags. No sulfur. There doesn’t seem to be anything but a weird lingering scent… Like old meat. It’s faint—very faint, but Dean can pick it up. It reminds him of that time about a year ago when he’d found that dead mouse under the motel bathroom sink.

 

Kate Milligan’s room is pleasant, like most women’s bedrooms. It’s done in cream and burgundy with little flowery, feminine accents that sometimes make Dean feel like he’s a too big creature in a small space and he might just break them if he touches, while at other times they make him feel like a kid again sneaking into his parents’ bedroom to touch the things set out on his mother’s vanity. Dip his fingertips into all her lotions and powders and perfumes so her scent lingered everywhere he touched, or the time she’d caught him with her lipstick, giggled and helped him clean it off his face before dad got home.

 

Kate herself is blonde, has a kind face and warm smile. She touches her hair a lot in her photos. Like she’s self-conscious about it.

 

Adam moves quietly, it’s kind of hard not to notice it. He just seems to show up without making any noise. Sputnik didn’t even bark and for some reason Dean wonders where she is, irrationally feels that she shouldn’t be out of his sight.

 

Dean feels uncomfortable in Adam’s presence, even more so when the younger man stands in the doorway for a moment just staring at him.

 

“What else can you tell me about Dad?”

 

That he was neurotic? That he was obsessed? That he cared more about that demon than us? “You knew him…”

 

“Not as well as you.”

 

Dean snorted and shook his head; “Trust me, kid, you don’t wanna know.”

 

The door downstairs opens and shuts and Dean hears whining, Sam’s voice pitched low and comforting and big feet ascending the stairs.

 

Sam has Sputnik in one arm when he appears in the doorway and a folded papers in the other. The dog looks unhappy, has her front paws against Sam’s chest pushing and arching her head away from him like she’d rather be back downstairs than anything. Dean is sympathetic, he’d rather be ANYWHERE than here at the moment.

 

It isn’t a very long conversation, Sam asks why the dog was alone down stairs, Dean says, quite plainly, that she was being a bitch—to which Sputnik replies by sneezes on him.

 

Kate’s missing person report is legit, the same with the bartender’s and the whole picture is starting to come into focus. Whatever Dad had been hunting in ‘ninety, was still kicking.

 

Dean doesn’t like it, leans his head back against the wall and lowers his voice, meets Sam’s eyes when he speaks; “Something’s not right with this kid, Sam… He—his color’s all wrong.”

 

“What do you mean?” He steps closer, sets the dog down and hunches his shoulders a little.

 

“He’s the same color as the Sandover ghost… People—I’ve never seen a person that wasn’t—I don’t know, PRETTY around the edges? It—It’s weird,” He rubs his eye, blinks around tiredly.

 

“You alright?”

 

Dean nods but he isn’t sure if it’s the truth or not.

 

“Maybe we should go back to the room, you’re not lookin’ so good.”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“Yeah, you’re sweating.”

 

Dean glares at him; “I told you I’d get sick.”

 

Sam’s mouth compresses; “Seriously, we should—“

 

Dean shakes his head; “I’m fine.”

 

Sam looks down at the dog, how she’s walked to the end of her lead and sat down as far from them as possible, eyes locked on the bedroom door; “If you say so.”

 

Adam’s sitting on his mother’s bed when they go back into the room, Sputnik refuses to budge so Dean leaves her sitting there.

 

As far as Adam knows his mother hadn’t ever met Joe Barton. But, again, it’s not exactly a big town, so it’s possible.

 

It’s really chance that he notices the scratches on the floor. Adam’s taken a seat on the edge of the bed, after that it’s just Dean’s back luck. Sam offers to go down the preverbal rabbit hole instead but Dean beats him to the punch. Pushes him out of the way and shrugs out of his jacket, empties his pockets and slides boots over bonnet into the vent.

 

That smell he’d noticed earlier is thicker here. He wriggles and worms his way along, can’t help but remember being trapped underground in a little pine box, cold and wet and fighting for air and he has to stop and bow his head, focus on his breathing before he can move forward. Sam calls down the vent after him, asks if he’s OK, asks how he’s going to get out of there.

 

Dean says he’s going to get out the same way he got in and Sam laughs mutters to Adam that Dean’s like a ferret, can get in and out of places normal people can’t, not to worry, it’s fine. But Dean can hear the worry in Sam’s voice and he pushes forward trying to ignore it.

 

Thirty minutes later they’re on the road again and Dean’s slumped in the passenger seat with one hand over his eyes fighting to breathe through nausea and an increasing razor like pain in his head. Sam gets them to the hotel without incident and Dean only puts up a token protest when he feels Sam’s big hand catch his elbow to keep him upright.

 

He doesn’t mean to, but he falls asleep without much effort. He remembers Sam sitting him on the bed, and then after that waking up to hushed voices.

 

Adam’s sitting at the table by the window. He looks resigned, purposeful and he—the whole room seems to be made of some weird translucent plastic. There’s light smearing out and off everything, sounds seem weirdly pulled and hollow, like he’s listening through a scotch glass pressed to a wall.

 

Sam’s mouth moves… but the words that come out don’t make any sense. Nothing makes much sense at the moment. Dean tastes something salty metallic and the world dips and sways. Sam shuffles over and sits on the edge of the bed beside him, fits a big hand to the back of his neck and the other on his wrist—pinches to find his pulse.

 

Sam’s mouth moves, there are words, but Dean can’t understand them.

 

Adam says something back and his voice—his voice sounds wrong. Wrongwrongwrong. It sounds like many voices, deep and high, mature and juvenile.

 

Dean tries to grab the noises before they reach his head so they can’t rattle around in there and make it any more painful than it already is. He tries to tell him to stop talking but what comes out doesn’t sound like it’s supposed to, instead something cool and wet runs out of his nose toward the pillow.

 

Sam gropes at the night stand and comes back with a fistful of tissues. Pinches them under Dean’s nose and levers him up carefully, supports his weight and bulk against one shoulder. He says something to Adam and the younger man nods, stands and disappears outside, comes back a few minutes later with a plastic shopping bag with a dozen or so ice cubes in it, ties it off and Sam eases it against the back of Deam’s neck.

 

Sam’s voice rumbles. The words are superfluous, it’s the tone, low and calm and even and as much as Dean hates being manhandled he can’t really stop it. He’s lacking the strength at the moment to do much of anything but sit there with his hands twitching in his lap, shivering and trying to get his eyes to stop rolling around like billiard balls.

 

Where’s Sputnik? What’s going on? What happened?

 

The words come drifting back slowly. Like flotsam and jetsam on the tide. A snippet here a snippet there. A name, a familiar conglomeration of letters and vowel sounds.

 

Sam and Adam are talking about him. Adam’s taking his pulse, ducks forward and stares into his face. His eyes keep losing focus, but at least they’re not rolling so badly.

 

“Are you sure he’s not having an aneurism?” Adam’s hands are cold. Not in a physical sense, because physically he’s about the same temperature as Sam, but something else makes them feel chilled and unearthly against Dean’s skin. He tries to shy away but Adam holds his eyelids apart and peers in curiously.

 

“Is that possible?” Sam says.

 

“Yeah… His pupils are even and reactive but this—Did he hit his face?”

 

“No.”

 

“Sinus infection?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then it isn’t normal… You said the dog would alert if he was having a seizure?”

 

Sam cleared his throat; “She has every other time.”

 

Dean wants to shake his head, wants to tell Sam that no, she hadn’t every other time. That when Sandover’s ghost had tried to grab him he’d felt just like this—well, maybe not this bad—but Sputnik hadn’t so much as peeped.

 

“Well, something’s wrong… You—you should take him to the hospital. He could be having a stroke.”

 

Dean worked his tongue around in his mouth and managed to get his lips parted and his voice loud enough to actually say something. He’d intended to say that he was alright, but that isn’t what came out; “Bright… ‘s all,” He swallowed, “So bright.”

 

Adam rocked to his feet and turned out the lights. It helped, but not by much, the sun was still up. Dean shut his eyes and felt his hands twitching against his jeans, searching. He still didn’t completely understand what was going on, why this had happened or how.

 

Sam eased the tissues away, wiped at his face like a parent might do a toddler and just watched Dean breathe for a few minutes before he lowered him back to the bed. He shifted the ice from the back of his neck to his forehead, gripped Dean’s legs by the knees and swung them onto the mattress again.

 

The next twenty or thirty minutes seem to drag along. Dean lays there letting the ice melt against his skin, cold drops of water sliding back through his hair over his scalp. He can feel each and every one, tingling as it slides toward the crown of his head.

 

Sam and Adam talk. Dean isn’t sure about what, probably him or a way to trick him into going to the hospital.

 

He hates that word, ‘Hospital’. What does it even mean? If you took away the image of what it’s supposed to mean, what does the word itself mean? It—it makes no sense. Hospital… it sounds like Hoss spittle… like horse drool or something.

 

Dean pries his eyes back open a while later. Adam’s still there. Sitting by the window with Sam. There’s a pizza box between them and a couple empty beer bottles. Sam’s talking low, whispering, explaining the difference between a shape shifter and a skin walker.

 

It’s only then that Dean realizes the curtains have been drawn and there’s a dismantled gun near Adam’s right hand. He snarls. It’s pathetic sounding, but it gets their attention, gets Sam on his feet when Dean tries to push himself up.

 

Dean wants to shout at him. Wants to yell and berate him. _How could you! How could you, Sam! Dad did this on purpose! He didn’t want this kid to know! He was trying to protect him and you—How could you!_

 

He snarls when Sam gets close, rests his elbows on his knees and covers his face with his hands. His eyes feel swollen and gritty and the world is still hued at the edges with weird smears of color. Sam tells him to lie back down, Dean tells him to shut the hell up.

 

He gets to his feet and staggers a little but manages to stay upright.

 

Sputnik is in the bathroom hiding behind the toilet. Dean shuts the door and leans against it. Sinks down to her level and lets her lap at his hands and wrists when she crawls into his lap.

 

Sam calls out, says he’s going to go and talk to the funeral home director about the crypts that had been broken into, see what evidence he can find. That he would be back as soon as possible, not to go anywhere.

 

Dean growls a low; ‘Fine’ through the door but doesn’t come out.

 

The world eases away over the next hour or so. All the color shrinks back and the shooting pain in his head dissipates. Sputnik won’t come out of the bathroom. Dean doesn’t blame her.

 

Adam is sitting by the window when Dean comes out, he’s carefully cleaning Dean’s sawed off double barrel. Dean snatches it out of his hand as he approaches and finishes cleaning it himself.

 

The thing with guns is, they’re not meant to shoot salt rounds. Salt damages the steel very—VERY quickly and if they’re not properly cleaned and oiled you wind up with equipment that could quite literally blow up in your face.

 

Adam doesn’t argue when Dean takes it back, just folds his hands on the tabletop and watches with his lips pursed. He wants to, Dean can tell by the expression on his face, but Adam doesn’t say anything about what happened, or really much of anything other than mentioning that Dean should eat something. “I ordered breadsticks, they’re really good.”

 

He finishes cleaning and oiling his gun, and gives Adam a long hard look. The brown of him tingles there, just out of sight, but Dean doesn’t push it, doesn’t let himself look even if he feels blinded and out of touch with reality without it.

 

 

Adam picks the pepperoni off a slice of pizza and eats it, dribbles butter oil over the cheese and eats it, doesn’t look away from Dean. “So… you feeling any better?”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“You didn’t look fine. Maybe we should go to the hospital. There could be something—“

 

“I’m not going to the hospital. I’m fine.”

 

“You’re still shaking—“

 

“Can you shut up?

 

And then the lights went out.

 

Sputnik appeared, like she’d freakin’ teleported and Dean almost tripped over her. He wound up stepping on her foot and she gave a wounded yelp and clamped her teeth down on his ankle. If he’d been wearing boots it wouldn’t have mattered, but Sam—the bastard—had taken his boots off him at some point.

 

It made little difference though, because the creature was rattling and slithering through the vent and Dean reacted instinctually. It wasn’t until they were outside and something COLD wrapped around Dean’s bitten ankle and PULLED that Dean registered anything off.

 

He landed hard on his back, wind knocked from his lungs and his shotgun went clattering away.

 

There was a white and orangetan blur and a rabid sounding snarl. Screeching tires and Dean caught a glimpse of mottled bruise colored skin, sharp wide spaced teeth and large bloodshot eyes set in a wide bat like face crested with a tangle of blonde hair.

 

Sputnik lunged at it all shiny sharp little teeth and wide enraged brown eyes— The creature hissed, mouth opening wide black tongue extended cat like and reached for her.

 

Dean didn’t think. He rolled forward and grabbed the closest part of the dog he could reach and pulled her back just as Sam and Adam caught him under the arms and pulled him free of the creature’s grip.

 

Sputnik yelped again, her poor tail abused in Dean’s hand and Dean curled himself around her while Sam dropped to one knee and pulled both triggers on Dean’s shotgun.

 

Sputnik was looking at him with such a hurt, uncomprehending expression on her face, tail tucked in and body curled inward defensively. Dean pulled her in by the back of her vest and swiped his hands over her little body looking for any indication that the creature had wounded her.

 

Her vest was torn in three neat gashes from the thing’s claws, but she was unharmed.

 

It was then that Dean realized what had almost happened. That when he’d been grabbed he’d gone down hard, had been stunned with no air in his lungs and completely at the creature’s mercy. That Sam had been driving like Sam as usual and only arrived just in time to pull him out.

 

If Sputnik hadn’t jumped under the truck after the thing Dean would have been gone down the preverbal rabbit hole just as Sam was climbing out of the car.

 

Sam helped him up, made him sit in the passenger seat while Adam moved his truck and they got a look at what the creature had left behind.

 

There was a sizable splatter of dark smelly blood.

 

Dean described what he’d seen and Sam explained what he’d found out about the grave robberies and Joe Barton. Dean put the rest together in his head pretty fast and rubbed his face tiredly.

 

Sam’s expression is tense as they make their way up the back path to the Milligan house. It’s obvious he wants to at least hook an arm around Dean’s shoulders because the limping is downright pathetic but Dean’s stubborn, slaps at him whenever he gets too close or holds out a hand.

 

There are four neat little scooping lacerations on Dean’s ankle, the exact imprint of Sputnik’s teeth and a growing bruise shaped like an all too human hand. His sock is stained  but the bleeding looks to have stopped.

 

Dean splashes it with holy water then peroxide and grits his teeth at the sting.

 

It’s not bad, once he gets the blood cleared away. It’ll itch like hell while it’s healing because his boot and sock will rub on it, but he’s had worse in more tender areas.

 

Sam argues the wisdom of keeping Adam around, training him, Dean denies it with everything he’s got. It’s too dangerous. The kid could get killed. They don’t know what this thing is yet, there’s no telling what it will do.

 

Sam makes a good point though, as much as Dean doesn’t want to acknowledge it. What if something comes after them and decides to use Adam against them? Or hurt the kid to get to them.

 

Adam takes the decision out of his hand though. He wants to learn and as much as Dean tries to talk him out of it, the kid is obstinate. He gives Dean a look that is so very John it makes his skin crawl.

 

They camp out. Not what Dean likes to do, but they don’t really have a choice in the matter. The Milligan house has already been breached by the thing, it’s got into their hotel room.

 

Adam fetches a sleeping bag from the hall closet and follows them in his truck out onto some deserted road or another. Sam’s driving so Dean tries to keep his mouth shut—TRIES to.

 

It looks like an old service road, mining or something most likely. There are a few old concrete block buildings with their roofs collapsed and an old truck that looks to have been gutted by flame.

 

Dean takes the back seat, curls up under one of their emergency blankets and two of his coats with sputnik in the bend of his knees.

 

Sam sprawls out in the front bundled in his own sleeping bag, head pillowed on his blazer.

 

It’s cold and unpleasant and Dean wakes stiff and uncomfortable, goes to water some trees while Sam sets up the Butane stove and makes instant oatmeal for the three of them. Dean hates oatmeal. HATES IT. But Sam gives him a look and he chokes it down with his pills and a bottle of water from their cooler.

 

They spend the majority of the day in the woods. Like something out of a B-Horror.

 

Sam teaches Adam to use a handgun. A Beretta they had in the trunk makes its way to the space between the cab and seat of Adam’s truck. Sam demonstrates basic knife throwing technique and explains about salt circles and basic devil’s traps.

 

Dean hangs back, watches with worry building behind his ribs. He sneaks off at about noon and whispers Castiel’s name, tries to find him wherever he is, but there’s no answer.

 

Sputnik sits in the car while Dean stitches up the tears in her vest. It’s not pretty, he only knows basic blanket stitches, darning stitches and how to sew his own or Sam’s flesh up. But, it will hold… hopefully. As long as she doesn’t pull too hard against the lead, maybe they should invest in a collar.

 

Dean can’t stick around and watch Sam and Adam for long. It’s like Sam doesn’t see it. It’s like he doesn’t understand how much like Dad he’s acting. Nothing matters but the hunt to him and Dean feels nauseous, catches himself creeping off ready to jam fingers down his throat and has to make himself stop and breathe. Make himself remember that it’s OK. That if Adam didn’t want this he wouldn’t be asking.

 

And at the same time something keeps screaming at him that this is so WRONG. Something is WRONG and he doesn’t know what it is or how to stop it.

 

“You’re Pre-Med, you got a girlfriend? Friends? Not anymore you don’t. If you’re really gonna do this, you can’t have those kinds of connections, ever. They’re weaknesses. You’ll just put those people in danger, get them killed.”

 

Dean leaves, lets his chair scrape against the floor, calls for the dog and leaves. Allows the kitchen door to slam behind him.

 

Sam finds him a few minutes later crouched outside in the confines of the Milligan’s back yard tossing a ball toward the fence for Sputnik to chase. She’s been as uncomfortable as he has been though for entirely different reasons most likely.

 

“What’s wrong?” Sam wraps his arms around himself. Squares his shoulders and stands there like he owns the fucking world.

 

Dean doesn’t look at him, can’t, just stays crouching there in the path and scratches Sputnik’s head and neck when she comes up with the ball in her mouth, tail wagging happily.

 

“You don’t even hear yourself, do you.”

 

Sam blinks, pulls his eyebrows down in confusion. “Hear myself what?”

 

“’Hunting is life. You can’t have connections.’ Jesus, Sammy. Dad gave YOU that exact same speech, remember? And what’d you do? You left. You packed up your shit and you left for Stanford,” He turns and glances at Sam, then throws the ball again and looks away; “You hated him for that stuff and now you’re quoting him? I just don’t get it, alright.”

 

“Yeah, well. It turns out Dad was right.”

 

“Since when?”

 

“Since always!”

 

Dean stares at him, gob smacked.

 

“You know what I see when I look at Adam, Dean?”

 

“A normal kid—“

 

“No,” His nose wrinkles; “Meat.”

 

“Because to the demons and monsters out there, that’s all he is. I hated dad for a long time. I did, but now I think I understand. So we didn’t have a picket fence or a merry Christmas. So what! Dad did right by us. He taught us how to protect ourselves and now it’s our job to make sure Adam learns the same things. We owe him that, Dean.”

 

Dean blinked slowly, was tempted to let his vision slip just to make sure Sam was actually still Sam. “What happened to you, Sammy. When did you become Dad?”

 

“You think I’m wrong?”

 

“I think it’s too late for us. This is our life, this is who we are. Okay! That’s fine. I accept that… But Adam’s just a normal kid who had something awful happen to him, but that’s no reason he has to give up everything. He still has a chance, man! He can go to school, be a doctor—“

 

“And what makes Adam so special?”

 

Dean looks up at him and he sees something dark in Sam’s eyes. Something vindictive and satisfied and it scares him; “What’re you jealous of the kid?”

 

“Are you?” His lip curls up; “He gets to go be something and have a girlfriend and all you have are memories and a few pages in a book—“

 

Dean lurches to his feet, eyes wide, jaw clenched. “You son of a bitch… How did—“ He remembers cleaning out the back seat, vacuuming up all the broken glass. Sam gathering up their bags and taking them inside. How long he’d been alone upstairs with them.

 

Dean shoves him. Hard. Levels a finger in his face and snarls the words; “You stay the fuck out of my things, Sam! You—you had NO RIGHT!” He shoves him again and Sam shoves back, plants his big palms on Dean’s chest and knocks him back.

 

“What—“ He bares his teeth; “What the hell are you talking about ‘your things’ Bobby had the goddamned books just sitting there, what was I supposed to do! They may have information in them that we need! What! I was just supposed to ignore them! For fucksake, Dean they’re written in third person, he KNOWS things! If you’d taken the time to read more than your own freaking sex-scenes you would have known that!”

 

Dean stares at him, hands clenched, jaw tight, Sputnik standing off to the side with her tail tucked up, strangely quiet.

 

And then realization melts across Sam’s face; “You’re hiding one, aren’t you—Chuck gave you—“

 

Dean hits him. It’s not as hard as it could have been. They’ve hit one another harder before, but it’s enough. It’s enough to shut Sam up fast because he doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t want Sam to SAY it. It’s bad enough he knows how pathetic it is, hearing Sam SAY it would just—he’d just die. He wouldn’t be able to handle it.

 

Sam stares at him and it’s obvious that he wants to hit back but he doesn’t. He just stands there staring with a hand on his jaw and his eyes wide.

 

Dean inhales, feels it shake and swallows against the burn in his throat and sinuses; “Not a damned word.”

 

0-0-0

 

He finds out where the cemetery is from Sam’s notes, drives even though he knows he shouldn’t and breaks into the crypt.

 

It smells like formaldehyde and rot and old leaves in there. Sputnik pulls one of her obstinate ‘do-not-want’ stunts again so he leaves her in the back seat on a blanket so he doesn’t end up scrubbing the carpet with a brush and soap to get out the stink of dog urine again. He feels vaguely uncomfortable going in there without her, but after what happened at the hotel the night before he’d rather her be somewhere safe than risk losing her.

 

She’d been an annoying necessity before, but now… now she’s kind of grown on him, despite her dog smell and the dog farts when she gets dairy. She helps… She really does. And he doesn’t want something bad to happen to her.

 

The whole crypt is a mess. Drippy dark patches he really doesn’t want to touch and broken tombs. It’s like something out of a mummy movie and he half expects one to pop up, snorts out a laugh and pans his light around looking for anything that may indicate what they’re dealing with.

 

He feels oddly like Goldilocks peering carefully into the three crypts, wonders how fucked up a fairytale that would have been.  Then again it probably would have held his attention better as a child than what the story really was.

 

Each of the crypts is empty save ripped open coffins in various stages of decay, splashes of dark goo and torn fabric.

 

The problem isn’t the evidence then, because there’s enough here, it’s the fact that so many creatures do this. Snatching bodies is indicative of a dozen or more nasties and snatching living people through air vents and ripping them to shreds points to a completely different set of monsters.

 

Think… He needs to think.

 

Dean leans his hips back against one of the tombs that looks undisturbed and breathes shallowly, carefully—Hesitantly, stretches out with the grace in his chest and feels around the edges of the room. He shuts it down as quickly as he gets it extended because the dull ache builds behind his eyes again and he still has to drive back.

 

It’s not worth it. Not now.

 

Then he hears it.

 

Whistling.

 

Not like a person whistles. But like the sound of air moving through a crack.

 

It takes the better part of twenty minutes, scrapes and bruises on all his knuckles and two crushed fingers to get the stone out of the way, but he gets it out of the way, crouches on all fours and peers back into the hole he’s created—

 

“Jesus… what is it with monsters and fucking creepy grave tunnels?”

 

He doesn’t want to do it. Has spent too much time already underground—can just picture getting halfway down there and becoming trapped—Suffocating—DROWNING in dirt.

 

There’s a smell. Dank and earthy and damp and Dean dry heaves reflexively, clamps his teeth shut and BREATHES. Just focus, he tells himself. Just focus.

 

It feels like every root he slithers past is a hand, slimy rotting fingers pulling across his skin. He feels claws in every little stone that scratches at him through his clothing, blood and bile and feces as the mud cakes on his knees and hands and elbows and chest.

 

He can barely breathe and his voice has pulled itself thin and raspy in his throat, choking him.

 

He keeps crawling, digging his nails in to scratch along just a few more inches. Just a few more—

 

The end of the tunnel looms up at him wreathed with jagged stone teeth and in his head he hears Alastair laughing, eight cold slimy hands yanking him back and tearing at his clothes—

 

He feels hellfire licking at his heels and insides and he pushes through into the abyss at the end of the tunnel. Rolls out with a hard painful thump over a coffin and down onto his back in the floor. His light flies from his hand and rolls away, an arch of illumination as it spins. Something jabs hard into his kidney and he muffles a cry and curls in on himself eyes squinted in pain as the flashlight comes to rest against a cracked, gnawed upon skull.

 

There are bones… dirt and old leaves and BONES everywhere.

 

Dean lurches up and presses his back against a wall, sits his hand right down in something sticky wet and warm with rot—

 

He holds his breath and turns to stare with wide eyes. Finds himself at eye level with the remains of Joe Barton’s corpse.

 

The man’s skin has been peeled back from his torso and his ribs are picked clean, his internal organs mush with a writhing mess of maggots. His tongue is swollen and purpled, has stretched his mouth open so far his jaw has come unhinged. There’s a mess of half chewed intestines spilled around him and his genitals have shriveled up between his bitten and half chewed thighs.

 

Dean wants to be sick, but he’s possibly too stunned to turn his head and vomit. Instead he just stares for a minute then slowly, expecting the corpse to turn blackened empty sockets to him and beg for mercy he stands, rubs his hand clean against his shirt, promises himself that he’s going to burn it later—burn everything he’s wearing and scrub himself with fucking bleach until his skin is red and raw and bloody but he knows the phantom stink will linger. He shivers, sickened and keeps his teeth clenched, keeps his eyes open wide and his breath carefully held.

 

Stay calm. Stay quiet. Keep still.

 

He hears a grinding noise, clattering and turns with his flashlight, feels his heart hammering behind his ribs like it wants to rip free and bounce away to Wonderland or something. He sees a light at the end of the grave tunnel and someone pushing the stones it had taken him so long to move back in place with perfect ease.

 

He catches a glimpse of dirty clothes and matted blonde hair, pulls out his gun and shoots to kill.

 

The bullets crash into the soft wet earth with wet squelches, bounce off one of the stones and—

 

The tunnel collapses.

 

Dean curses and lurches back in shock, then goes forward and tries to rake the mud out of the way. That’s his way out. That’s his ONLY WAY OUT!

 

But it’s no use. It’s gone… He’s trapped.

 

There is no cell service. No more loose stones. No sewer grate… Nothing.

 

He writhes in his skin. Can’t BREATHE—He’s suffocating slowly.

 

He paces. Back and forth, carefully scoots all the bones into one corner where he can keep an eye on them, shines his light back to Joe Barton’s remains to make sure they haven’t moved and tries the door again.

 

Something starts beeping.

 

Dean flattens himself against the door, shines his light back and forth looking for something—ANYTHING that could be making that noise.

 

There’s nobody there. No living person, no reanimated corpses. No ghosts… But the beeping continues.

 

Dean moves forward slowly, gun in hand and forces himself to slow his breathing. In and out. In and out.

 

His heart is like a drumbeat in his chest, so hard and fast it makes it difficult to take a full breath.

 

The beeping is coming from a coffin not far from the niche he’d tumbled through. It’s old. Early thirties judging from the style and type of decoration, as well as the solid craftsmanship. There’s no way something in there should be beeping, but it is.

 

Dean’s fingers shake and he has to squeeze them into a fist to stop it before he has the nerve to push the askew lid up and step back—

 

The smell is awful. Putrescence and bile and feces and everything nasty Dean has tried to forget the smell of but never will.

 

The body in the coffin is fresh. Less than a week judging by the state of decay. Her eyes are open, shriveled and blackened in her gray face.

 

Death does something to people. It makes their bodies mostly unrecognizable. It’s her hands that do it. Dean remembers those hands from a photo.

 

Kate Milligan is wearing a ring. It’s simple, sweet. A silver band on her right hand with Adam’s name and birthdate engraved on it. Her hands are swollen, too swollen to have gotten it off when the creature had stolen her clothes.

 

She would have been pretty in life. Smiles and hugs… but now she’s nothing but rotting meat in a coffin that isn’t even hers.

 

Dean wonders if he had looked like that at only one week after his death. Wonders how he had looked to his brother and Bobby. Bloated and rotting and death gray with what blood was left in his body pooling in his back, leaving him bruised and heavy and so very, very dead.

 

It’s morbidly—strangely fascinating to look at and he knows, on some level, that he should give the poor woman her dignity and close the lid—not look at her so ravaged and decaying and naked where this creature has left her half eaten, but he can’t… All he can do is stare and feel this overwhelming sense of loss for her. A woman he’s never known but whom his father had obviously cared for. Just—just gone.

 

She’s wearing a watch. The alarm is beeping, it’s eight PM… Time for her lunch at work. Eventually it stops beeping and Dean just stands there with his flashlight shaking in his hand staring, wondering what the point of it all is if everyone ends up like this.

 

There is no dignity in death, Dean realizes. There is nothing honorable or beautiful about it, it simply is what it is. Unavoidable, inescapable. No amount of money will stall it, no feverish prayer or good deed or bad will spare you this.

 

It’s frightening, humbling…

 

Dean takes a long slow breath and lets it shake on its way out again.

 

He turns to the other closed coffin along the opposite wall and pushes the lid up slowly, curious perhaps.

 

Adam’s eyes haven’t wasted away yet. They’re yellowed white and blackening from the lack of moisture. His skin is sallow and torn and he’s been eaten away from below the chest. Hollowed out. His nails are turned back and there are black lines of blood drawn from the corners of his gaping mouth toward his ears like a grotesque smile.

 

His tongue is gone, cut or bitten out, Dean doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know.

 

He is disturbed to see Adam’s body here, in an obvious state of decay and yet he’d left Sam with him—

 

Oh, shit.

 

Oh, SHIT!

 

It’s a weird buzz in his head, an ache in his chest and he scans the crypt, feels for a moment that he’s trapped… And notices there’s an angel above his head. Stained glass and smiling kindly, peacefully. It’s hidden and crusted with leaves and dirt. It probably hasn’t been cleaned in years no wonder he hadn’t seen it before.

 

It’s a long way, but he doesn’t have a choice. The doors won’t open, crawling back through the tunnel is impossible. It’s his only way out.

 

Dean tips his head back and shouts for Castiel.

 

He waits, pleads in his head, squeezes with the grace in his chest; “CASTIEL!”

 

But nothing happens.

 

He curses. He shouts, wants to throw things but at the moment it would be counterproductive.

 

Coffins weigh a lot. A LOT. Even more when they’ve got a body in them. It takes too long, he knows it does, but he can’t allow himself to think about it. Not now, not when Sam is in danger.

 

He gets out. It isn’t easy, not by any means, but he gets out. Has to climb down off the damned crypt and run back to the car.

 

Sputnik is shivering in the driver’s foot well, looks scared to death and wedges herself to his side when he climbs in, despite the fetid rotting smell clinging to his clothes. She presses up close to him and sits there trembling, looking for some kind of comfort and he delves one hand into her ruff and just pulls her close while he drives—speeds really, back across town to the Milligan house.

 

She follows him. Seems somehow determined—runs up the stairs and in the door when he throws it open.

 

Sputnik doesn’t bark. Doesn’t make a sound save the clicks of her toenails on the floor.

 

It happens without his intent this time. His vision just slides right over, like film on a reel.

 

The world is a whirlwind of colors but his focus is on the creature wearing Adam’s skin. Brown and ugly and dead.

 

Dean shoots him, right in the chest, barely hears Sam shout something about Ghouls and aims at the fake Kate Milligan’s head. Blasts it clean from her shoulders, pulls his pistol and without hesitation puts three bullets in rapid succession into Ghoul Adam’s head as he’s lunging up from the floor.

 

Sam’s eyes widen in his ashy face, eyes dark and somehow sorrowful.

 

They are ugly wounds. Bad wounds leaking bright red blood.

 

Arterial blood.

 

Dean wraps his arms in towels from the kitchen, pushes them up above his head and gives a long low whistle for Sputnik as he wraps an arm around Sam’s waist and practically carry’s him out.

 

The hospital seems so far away, too far.

 

Sam is too pale, pulling in uneven quick breaths. His breath is fogging against the passenger window and when Dean barks out at him to keep pressure on it Sam doesn’t really react. He twitches and his arms shift against one another, but he doesn’t really move.

 

Dean curses—Curses even louder and pushes his foot against the accelerator.

 

It takes eight minutes. Eight. Minutes.

 

Dean doesn’t stop he drives right into the ambulance bay and pulls Sam out. Leaves the engine running and the doors open and blood all over his seat.

 

Sam’s knees give out just inside the ER and the nurses rush in from all sides, one starts asking questions.

 

Dean tells them Sam had been mugged takes the paperwork and fills it out as best he can with their aliases. Has to pick Sputnik up because she’s barking at the doctors and gaining strange looks.

 

He doesn’t see Sam for three hours. He moves the car, parks close to the entrance but far enough away that he’s not suspicious. He has to flirt shamelessly at a nurse to be allowed back to see Sam and when he does he’s the color of ashes and lying propped up in a bed in post-op. Groggy and grumbling at the nurses trying to check his vitals.

 

Morphine… They had to give him morphine.

 

Sam’s always been a bit of a lightweight when it comes to narcotics. He can hold his alcohol better than even Dean sometimes, but slip him some pot or a powerful pain reliever and it’s all rainbows and unicorns in Sammy-Land.

 

It’s another hour before Sam’s coherent enough to be moved into a private room. Sam feigns sleep and Dean says he’s too shaken to talk to the cops at the moment and asks if they’ll come back in the morning.

 

Dean waits until two, when the hallway seems mostly deserted to sneak Sam out.

 

He’s unsteady on his feet. Groggy and the pain medication is wearing off. His hands are swollen and bound in splints which means absolutely no driving. Dean feels like he should be happy about that, but he’s not.

 

Dean drives back out the service road they’d occupied the night before and bundles Sam in blankets stays up the rest of the night watching Sam breathe as he finally falls asleep leaned against the door with his arms folded defensively against his chest.

 

It’s almost dawn by the time Dean slips out of the car, strips down and scrubs himself clean with a jug of holy water. Scrubs until his skin is red and bloody bruised and he’s shivering from the cold, changes into clean clothes and tries to make himself presentable. He kicks the soiled mess of clothes he removed into the bushes, digs a hole and buries them. Can’t stand the potential of burning death stink and goes back to the car.

 

Sam is awake. Looks miserable, pale and kind of sweaty.

 

Dean stares at him for a minute then carefully unwraps him from his cocoon of blankets, grinds his teeth at the hisses of pain and peers at the bandages with a weird pressure in his throat.

 

“I wanna try somethin’.”

 

Sam blinks at him slowly. His voice is so thin Dean can barely hear him; “Try what?”

 

Dean doesn’t really have a word for it, just a weird foreign urge, like a little voice nibbling at the back of his mind. He flattens one hand on Sam’s wrist and the other on his elbow, supporting his arm, breathes in and lets his eyes fall shut—focuses and inches out through the crack in the barrier Zechariah had formed inside him.

 

It hurt, but he didn’t relent, just a slow, constant flow.

 

“Dean?”

 

“Shut up… You—you feelin’ anything?”

 

“It itches a little bit.”

 

Dean relented, let Sam pull his arm back to his lap and looked away.

 

“What were you tryin’ to do exactly?”

 

Dean turned, watched how Sam hunched under the blankets again and let out a sigh.

 

“Nothin’… Don’t worry about it.”

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0


	23. Under the Rug

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! Hoping updates can go back to twice a week now that the holidays are over. Wish me luck!
> 
> Special thanks to Jessi for helping me when my brain froze. *gives big smooches*

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

0-0-0

 

Sam’s running a fever by the time they get to Bobby’s. He’s not exactly coherent, but he isn’t raving either, some frightening middle ground where his eyes slip to the side and he’ll giggle, high and helpless, for absolutely no reason.

 

Dean’s sweating too, terrified he may have put down the wrong blood type for his brother and inadvertently killed him. Or maybe he’s having some allergic reaction. He can see Sam’s color sometimes, from the corner of his eye. All black at the edges and dull red mixed with gray.

 

He calls ahead, when they pass into South Dakota and Bobby meets him at the door, grumbles and bares his teeth and kicks dirt and gravel over the puddle of sick Sam leaves beside the stairs.

 

Sputnik wanders off and squats near where Sam left his bicycle so Dean doesn’t say anything. She’ll come back when she feels like it and he leaves the door open a crack.

 

Sam seems to have gone all rubber kneed on the drive over and he leans heavily on Dean’s shoulder—He’s a heavy sonofagun, has bulked up considerably over the past nine months and Dean staggers a little under the weight of him, shakes his head when Bobby goes for the stairs and eases Sam down onto the couch. He pulls a blanket over him and drags the desk chair over to sit in.

 

The bandages on Sam’s wrists are still relatively clean, there are two small spots on his left wrist, but considering it had been sliced twice he’s not surprised.

 

Bobby lets the dog back in and disappears into the kitchen for a moment, comes back with an unlabeled prescription bottle, says it’s Hydrocodone and sloshes a little holy water into a relatively clean scotch glass.

 

Dean takes a drink to prove himself and wedges his shoulder under Sam’s, pushes him upright and forces the pills between his lips, makes him gulp down the water and watches—fascinatedREVOLTED—as the black at the edges of Sam’s color WRITHES, flicks away little puffs of smoke that dissipate in the air. It’s like watching fire spitting embers into the night sky.

 

Sam doesn’t react though, swallows the slightly salty solution with a wrinkle of effort between his eyes and collapses back, physically drained.

 

Bobby asks in a quiet voice what happened, Dean tells him the abbreviated version, says as soon as Sam’s feeling a little better he wants to go back and give Adam a proper hunter’s funeral. He goes through what the nurse had told him at the hospital, that they had operated to clean the wounds and repair the muscular damage, that the tendons in Sam’s left wrist had been severed but they’d managed to reconnect them. Sixty-eight stitches, a stint to hold open one of the savaged arteries, and in total, six units of blood.

 

“She said if I hadn’t gotten there so fast he would have bled out… He’s got more strangers’ blood in him now than he does his own.”

 

Bobby nods, “What about the fever?”

 

Dean swallows, desperately wants to snag that bottle of scotch off Bobby’s desk and take a few deep pulls, says he and Sam had taken a dip in Puget Sound last week and it would just be their luck that his brother had caught pneumonia or something on top of this.

 

Sam’s phone rings during their conversation, it’s an unknown number and when Dean answers it he hears sounds of a truck stop then the line disconnects.

 

The next twenty-four hours seem to pass at a crawl. Sam’s temperature continues to climb and by the next morning Bobby’s helped Dean carry the taller young man up the stairs and spread him out on the bed. After that things happened quickly. Cold compresses, icepacks under his arms and on his stomach.

 

Sam’s lost somewhere, his eyes roll ceaselessly and he talks—rambles about the strangest things. He talks to Ruby sometimes, calls out to her pleadingly, snarls and tosses his head, kicks the blankets back and lies there shivering.

 

Once or twice his whole body goes rigid and arches off the bed and Sputnik starts barking at him where she’s taken up residence between the two beds on her cushion. Dean can’t help but grip the bed clothes in his fists and try not to grab Sam and force him down against the bed. Is this what it’s like when he has a seizure? Is it this—this scary? It’s hard for Dean to remember the early days after his injury, had Sam had to sit there and watch him like this? Tense and fearful of each twitch in his limbs?

 

Dean isn’t even sure Sam is actually ‘seizing’ more as having vivid dreams and reacting to them. He can’t tell, is afraid to, because he doesn’t want to think of his brother hurting. He doesn’t want to think that something could be WRONG with Sam.

 

Sam talks in his sleep. Whines and tosses his head, curses and thrashes and fights with invisible enemies. Once or twice his eyes come open and dart around frantically, land on Dean or Bobby and hold there like he’s afraid of them, is waiting for them to lash out at him. Eventually his eyes will slide closed and he’ll go still for a while, but each minute feels like an eternity.

 

Bobby says again that they should take him to the hospital, that Sam might have an infection or be having some kind of reaction to the medicine he’d been given in Windom. Dean’s starting to believe him and has begun packing up some of their things and preparing Sam to be moved…

 

It’s when the lights start flickering that Dean realizes something isn’t right and not the normal ‘not right’ either. This is something Different. It’s when the water glass on the bedside table shatters and the door slams that Dean KNOWS something is WRONG with Sam. He’s not sure what, honestly is scared to know and when he tilts his head back and calls for Castiel nothing happens.

 

There is almost no red left in Sam’s color, it’s all gray and black that’s working its way inward toward his skin with just faint smears of faded transparent red toward his core.

 

Dean grinds his teeth, hefts his brother over his shoulder and carries him down the stairs, Sputnik bouncing down behind him whining.

 

Bobby’s in the den when he passes through on his way to the basement. He lurches up from his chair, stuffing the yarn he was untangling into a drawer and shouts, asks just what the hell Dean’s doing!

 

“He’s sick. He’s the wrong color!”

 

It doesn’t make any sense, being the ‘wrong color’, it’s a feeling really, more of a gut instinct than actual knowledge. Dean’s always trusted his gut above all else. Instinct is usually right, especially when it comes to hunting.

 

Bobby follows him down, opens the door to the panic room and lets Dean carry his brother in, ease him onto the cot along the wall and peel up his eyelids to check his pupil reaction.

 

There are red little veins standing out around his iris, irritated uncontrollable watering because of the heat in his veins, tears that drip back into his hair.

 

Bobby brought more pills and somehow Dean got his brother to swallow them, but it didn’t help.

 

Bobby found a vein on the top of Sam’s foot and got a line in, hooked up fluids to keep him hydrated and brought Dean a pair of safety goggles when the light bulbs in the room started fizzling and popping ominously.

 

Three days seemed to pass like a week. Changing bandages and IV bags, taking Sputnik out for long walks because Bobby said Dean was worrying himself sick and the last thing he needed was to drop over convulsing because he didn’t take care of himself.

 

It was uncomfortable, unnatural to Dean, stepping back from Sam when his brother needed him and focusing on himself. It—it felt _wrong._ He didn’t need sleep, didn’t need all the attention, not when Sam was lying there fevered out of his head lashing out with his crazy mind powers because he was too sick to know better.

 

But Bobby was right. Dean knew it when on the third day Sputnik started alerting him while he was walking her. Low urgent ‘Whuff—WHUFF’ sounds between her teeth and quick scratches at his shins as she jumped up at him.

 

He’d forgotten his medication that morning… and all the day before.

 

He didn’t make it inside. Wound up against that stack of oldsmobiles he’d abused months ago, sitting in the mud hoping it was over soon.

 

It wasn’t BAD, not like he was afraid it would be. But he listened, had set the stopwatch feature on his watch and stuck it in the pocket of Sputnik’s vest. Sam had said it was important to keep track of these things.

 

He was up on his feet again within ten minutes, soaking wet from the mud with an ache in all his limbs and a tingly numb sensation in his fingertips.

 

Bobby was just coming up stairs when Dean came back inside, gave him a startled look; “What happened to you!”

 

He inhaled and pushed it out, toed out of his boots and tried not to drip everywhere; “I fell down.”

 

Bobby scoffed; “In what, the pond?”

 

He met the older hunter’s gaze tiredly and said it again, slowly; “I fell down.”

 

He got it after that, ground his teeth, shook his head and jerked his chin toward the stairs; “Go clean up… Sam’s awake.”

 

Dean didn’t like the way his jeans felt against his skin after his shower. He felt sensitive and irritated all over, pulled on a pair of sweats and one of Sam’s oversized hoodies and went to the basement.

 

Sputnik was lying on the bed at Sam’s hip chewing on some squeaky toy or another. Bobby had ‘found’ them somewhere, but Dean had seen the packaging in the garbage, he just knew better than to bring it up.

 

Sam’s eyes were wide, still feverish, but alert. He looked awful, scruffy in the face, pale and his hair was dirty. His lips moved, but not much sound came out, words repeated silently; “I’m sorry… I’m so—so sorry.”

 

Dean shook his head, scrubbed his palm over his cheek and gave a yawn. He didn’t have anything to say, felt too tired and muzzy headed at the moment to manage anything. So he dragged over a chair and sat, pulled one of Sam’s hands closer and inspected his bandaging, let his thoughts clear and his body go slack.

 

Maybe that’s what did it, maybe it was the fact he felt disconnected from his body and his muscles were so relaxed there wasn’t enough tension caused by the action to hurt him.

 

Sam’s fingers twitched and goose flesh raced up his arms. “What’re you doing, Dean?”

 

He didn’t open his eyes; “I don’t know.”

 

Sam swallowed audibly; “You—are you doing that?”

 

“Doing what?”

 

“Just look…”

 

He opened his eyes and looked down at his hands, saw nothing out of the ordinary… except the room seemed brighter. He turned his head and blinked at the lamp beside them, could hear the electricity buzzing in it—Watched as the brightness of the bulb seemed to fluctuate like a heart beating. It didn’t sizzle, didn’t pop, but when Dean noticed it and withdrew the brightness died down and it was just a soft glowing bulb again.

 

“Dude,” Sam’s mouth curled up into a weak smile; “I think you totally just graced up Bobby’s lamp.”

 

Dean snorted and leaned back rubbing his face; "Well, shit, s'not much, but at least it'll save us a fortune on batteries."

 

Sam chuckled, looked tired enough to sleep for a month and wetted his lips; “Bobby told me you had another one earlier… That true?”

 

Dean looked down at his lap and nodded; “Fell in the mud.”

 

“Are you OK?”

 

“’m fine… just sore,” He rubbed his thighs with the flats of his palms for lack of something better to do with his hands and bowed his chin to his chest; “I’ve had worse.”

 

Sam looked at him intently for a long while, just watching him. “Dean?” He inhaled and let it out slowly; “We can’t keep doing this.”

 

Dean felt his heart lurch in his chest, “What?”

 

“You and me… We can’t just keep—“ He lets his eyes fall closed; “We both want the same thing. I want you safe, you want me safe… instead this happens.”

 

Dean scuffed his foot against the edge of the devil’s trap absently.

 

Sam speaks slowly, carefully; “I’ll make you a deal, OK?”

 

Dean snorts. “Like a demon deal?”

 

“No, like a Sam and Dean deal, alright, Smartass?”

 

Dean makes a rolling hand gesture, indicating Sam should continue.

 

“We say we got one another’s back, right? Well, it’s about time we start acting like it,” He inhales, lets it out and tilts his head to look Dean in the face; “No more secrets.”

 

Dean’s jaw clenches.

 

“Why don’t you wanna kill Lilith?”

 

Dean blinked; “What makes you think I don’t wanna kill her?”

 

“Any time I mention anything about her you pull back, close off. Choke it down and clam up… You want to run away.”

 

Dean inhales slowly, rubs his face and speaks under his breath; “Because she’s bad news, Sam.”

 

“She needs to be stopped— She’s killing people. This is our JOB, it’s what we do, remember? We hunt things and save people.”

 

Dean looked down at his hands, squeezed together so tightly they shook.

 

“Don’t you want revenge?”

 

Did he? Would that fix anything? Would it make anything better?

 

“If we stop her—WHEN we stop her… I don’t wanna do it for revenge, I wanna do it because it’s the right thing to do,” He inhales and lets it out, “I spent my whole life looking for vengeance and…” His voice shakes so he swallows it down, “It’s not gonna fix anything, me goin’ after her for revenge. It didn’t fix anything, me takin’ a knife to Alistair wanting to make him hurt, all it did was put me on the same level as him and it—it makes me sick… So, no, I don’t. I want to stop her because it’s the right thing to do, not because of what happened.”

 

Sam stares at him, glassy eyed and confused. “Alistair hurt you, Lilith hurt you, it’s OK to make them p—“

“I’m tired of chasing revenge, Sam,” Dean can’t even look at him, “I’m sick of it and I won’t do it anymore… If that’s all you’re after on my behalf you can stop. Revenge isn’t worth turning yourself into a demon over, because all it leaves you with is one more of Them even worse than the last.”

 

Sam swallows a knot in his throat, gives a full body shudder and looks away. It’s quiet for a long while and Dean is considering going back upstairs and taking over Bobby’s couch for a while.

 

“It’s the Apocalypse, Dean… and we have to be strong enough to deal with it,” Sam picks at the edge of the blanket and Sputnik chews on her plastic newspaper; “But you’re not strong enough to do this…  You’re not strong enough, not like this…” He swallows again, convulsively, “And neither am I.”

 

Dean finally seems to relax fully.

 

Sam turns and looks at his brother, shakes and can’t seem to stop it from reaching his voice; “I don’t want to be a demon, Dean. I don’t want that and I’m afraid that’s exactly what it’s going to take for me to kill Lilith by myself.”

 

Dean inhales, feels it catch in his throat and has a difficult time letting it out again without making a noise.

 

“We can help one another… You watch my back, I’ll watch yours,” He shifts on the bed, flexes his fingers and tries to meet Dean’s eyes even though they’re turned away and Dean has his arms crossed defensively; “But the only way we can do that is if we trust one another… So… I’m not going to ask that you trust me because honestly, I don’t trust myself right now… I’m going to ask you to do something and you’re not going to like it… You’re not going to want to do it but you have to.”

 

Dean looks at him. “What’re you talking about?”

 

And Sam just says it, no working up to it, no hesitation, no subtlety. He just opens his mouth and lets the words come out; “If I turn into a demon, I want you to kill me… I want you to take Ruby’s knife and kill me before I hurt you or someone else.”

 

“Sam—“

 

He turns and looks Dean right in the eye, doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he’s crying; “This is me, Dean. I don’t want to turn into one of them. I’m asking you, Please—PLEASE, if I go dark side, take me out. Don’t let me hurt anyone… Don’t let me hurt YOU,” He swallows again; “If you can’t do it or won’t do it, just tell me now.”

 

“And what will you do if I can’t? What’ll you do if I can’t look you in the face and stick a knife in your chest?”

 

Sam’s lower lip quivers and he grinds his teeth to keep his voice even, keep himself from making any noise; “If you can’t look at me now and say you’ll stop me if it happens then we need to find another way to kill Lilith fast because THIS is looking like it might be our only option,” He hiccups, “And I’ll do it if it’s the only way to stop her. But I don’t _want to_ anymore, now that I know what’s happening to me, I don’t WANT to do it this way anymore.”

 

0-0-0

 

Sam takes too long in the bathroom.

 

Sam takes too long eating his dinner.

 

Sam takes too long getting ready for bed.

 

Dean is glad he’s up and around to do any of it, even if it is annoying as hell.

 

Dean sleeps lightly, doesn’t drift off enough to actually dream, he keeps one eye on Sam all night. He has half dreams, imagines Castiel sitting on the edge of his bed sharing intense stares with Sputnik. Imagines he can hear a soft voice describing different smells and actions.

 

It has to be a dream because the voice sounds a little like Meg in cadence and a little like a young Elizabeth Taylor in tone but then again not. Neither of them would ever have sounded that happy or truthfully glad to have found the smell of wild onions growing in the yard, or crab grass by the front gate.

 

Sam doesn’t stir, he sleeps deeply doesn’t move much except to rub his face against the pillow.

 

The next morning Sam goes for a walk around the house after breakfast. Winds up sitting in the garage with Dean and Sputnik watching his brother put the finishing touches on the truck, readying it for paint after lunch when it warms up.

 

Dean says there’s an electric razor in Bobby’s upstairs bathroom if Sam wants to get rid of that lion mane he’s attempting to grow.

 

Sam gives him the finger, grins because it doesn’t hurt too badly and finds one of his old soccer balls in Bobby’s little used office, strips Sputnik out of her sweater and nudges it around, lets her chase it and Dean watches  while he starts scuffing what paint is left on the truck so the new coat sticks.

 

He pulls down his face mask about halfway down the passenger side and watches his brother and the dog. Sam’s getting tired, but Sputnik is excited, is guiding the ball with one shoulder and her open mouth, snarling and yapping excitedly as she runs with it because she’s too small to actually get her teeth into it.

 

Sam’s laughing, looks better—although more pale—than he has in weeks.

 

Dean wonders then, if the world would be a better place if he let Sam go… Let his brother go have that life he wanted. Dean wonders if either of them are going to survive this whole Apocalypse. He wants to… He wants to survive it, but if there’s a choice, either him or Sam… Dean wants his brother to live. He wants Sam to have that choice. He wants Sam to have a simple life. He wants Sam to have a family and security and the love of some simple generous person.

 

Dean turns away and pulls his mask back up, squints through the lenses of his safety-glasses and braces the sander as he continues working, lets his mind slip to nothing while he focuses on the lines of the truck.

 

He’s been working on this truck for months now and only just realized it was the same as the truck his Cas had drove. Hell, he’d even been planning to paint it white, but now that he knew, now that he remembered, he couldn’t. It didn’t seem right. Here he’d unconsciously been trying to MAKE those twisted memories real and it sickened him a little. He couldn’t paint it white now, even if that’s what his instinct told him to do, he couldn’t. He’d just grab a container of automotive paint from Bobby’s shelf at random and lay it down without looking. That would be best. Take the decision away from him because it was obvious Dean couldn’t make it on his own. It was stupid anyway, just an old truck he’d decided to sell.

 

He forced the thoughts away tried to fight back the images in his head and the surge of emotion in his chest, seeing his Cas driving off to work, or sitting in his cubicle or smiling from the passenger seat… That content, soft look in his eyes just lying there naked and tangled with the camera looking at the madness they’d jus—

 

Something BURNS against his skin and Dean jumps back with a cry of pain and surprise, drops the dual action sander and bats at a spark of flame on his shirtfront.

 

“SON OF A _BITCH!”_ He snarls, gets it put out and holds the fabric out, stares at the hole and the little burn on his skin, high on his sternum. He glares down at the sander and kicks it spitefully, jerks the cord out of the wall and gathers it up, throws it onto the work bench and promises himself that he’s going to have some words with Bobby about his second-hand-dumpster-diving power tools then goes back to the car to finish scuffing by hand.

 

0-0-0

 

Dean finds a job in Indiana around the twenty-eighth. Simple in appearance, he can’t even bring himself to call it a case; Family moves into a Victorian house, their thirteen-year-old daughter wakes up in the night to the form of a man with a handlebar moustache trying to climb on top of her in her bed. Broken dishes, things moved, almost nightly attacks on their little girl. It’s escalated in the last week, the mother woke up to her husband choking in bed beside her with the moustache-man standing over him. The fatther survived, but the whole family is terrified of their house now.

 

It’s a good kind of case, one Sam and Dean don’t need to use fake IDs for because the whole family are Wiccans. They’re some of the ‘lucky’ few who are aware of the supernatural and the existence of hunters and had called Bobby themselves. Normally, they would have been able to deal with the spirit themselves, but the rituals the family has done to keep the ghost out aren’t working. They’re at a loss.

 

Dean has only worked with Wiccans on two occasions. Once was a bad experience, the second time he was young, under John’s belt and hadn’t got to know them well, only that he and his father didn’t have to hide who they were around the group.

 

The Boners… Dean snorts and is promptly informed its pronounced ‘Bahn-er’—won’t step foot in the house until the ghost is dealt with. The daughter, Safire, helps with the research. She’s home schooled, and uses it as a ‘learning experience’, goes with Sam to the library and mixes up some herbal tea stuff to help with the numbness in his fingertips. And ‘promote healing’.

 

Dean thinks it’s a bunch of hippie hoodoo bullcrap, but whatever. Sam might as well become a hippie for all the rabbit food he’s been eating—and making Dean eat lately.

 

Safire is a thin, short girl with curly light brown hair, big brown eyes and a smile that’s just a little too wide over her braces. She knows what she’s doing though, her parents have taught her well, swaps photocopies of the pages in some of her books for information on basic protection she and her family could use. She doesn’t want summoning rituals. Thinks it’s too much bad karma, but she takes weird comfort in demon repelling rituals and instructions on how to kill malicious corporeal entities like onxy wasps and Gasts.

 

Protection, she says. All she wants to know is how to protect herself from something that would come after her. “I don’t want to go LOOKING for these things, that’s just crazy!” She wrinkles her nose up, “No offence.”

 

Sputnik likes Safire because the girl throws a stick for her in the yard while Dean and Sam talk to her mother about what’s been going on in the house.

 

“It’s that man mostly… I’m pretty sure there’s a family of Hobgoblins in the root cellar, but they don’t seem very social so we’re on hold with that conversation.”

 

It’s a pretty open and shut case once they find out WHO the ghost is.

 

Lucius Crane, died eighteen-sixty of a gunshot wound to the head. Left his wife, six daughters and young sister in law with his dwindling finances, mounting debt and this house.

 

It’s not hard to figure out what was going on just by looking at photos of him and his family, the possessive way he had a hand on his wife’s arm and his twelve-year-old sister in law’s shoulder.

 

The only problem to arise was when they went to burn the man’s bones where they’re buried at the back of the property and it does nothing. He fizzles with flame for a little bit, but he just laughs and smothers the fire consuming his skeleton with a twist of his hand. Knocks Sam and Dean sprawling into the bushes and disappears.

 

Dean thinks for a moment that they got the wrong bones, drops into the grave and nudges them around with a stick. It’s then he notices it. “Sam, look.”

 

There is an exit wound. There is a piece of the man’s skull missing.

 

Lucius Crane was shot and killed by his sister in law, who was then sent to a sanatorium for the mentally insane where she died three months later of fever, most likely TB from the records. The report given by Crane’s widow was that her husband had gone to check on her sister because he’d heard a noise and shortly after she heard the gunshot and found her husband dead on the floor.

 

Dean breaks open the wall in Safire’s bedroom and finds an old brickwork chimney, the bullet and a silver dollar sized piece of Lucius Crane’s skull.

 

Crane tries to stop him, throws things in Safire’s room around, but Dean gets a match to the bullet and bone fragment and Crane goes up like kindling.

 

Safire, her mother and father meet them outside an hour later, after Dean’s cleaned up the mess of plaster and lathing he made all over the girl’s room. The five of them walk through the house with burning sage afterward to ‘Cleanse’ the place and new salt lines are laid down at all the windows and doorways.

 

Crane is reburied with his missing charred bone fragment and six silver dimes in his gaping skeletal mouth wrapped up in a pouch with herbs to make sure his spirit remains at rest.

 

It’s as they’re leaving that Dean notices the jingling, but he doesn’t FIND it until that evening in the hotel room as he’s pulling off Sputnik’s sweater and vest.

 

“What the hell is this?”

 

Sam peers over his brother’s shoulder and snorts in amusement; “Looks like a protection sigil.”

 

“Yeah, but what’s she doing with it?”

 

“Are you jealous?”

 

“No, I just wanna know why the dog’s wearing jewelry,” He moves to pull the chain from around her neck but Sputnik wiggles out of his arms and tries to lap him in the face. Eventually he gives up and mutters something about finding a fucking collar for her because that chain is kinda sissy and’ll break easy. “Probably the best kind of protection for dogs anyway, not like you can take’em to get tattooed.”

 

Sam rolls his eyes.

 

0-0-0

 

It’s that dreary graybrown point in the year where everything that will be beautiful in the summer is ugly and somehow ruined in appearance. Fields that will be green are mud and muck and dead grass, trees that will bear fruit are naked and wet with broken branches from the snow. It’s unpleasant and looking at it one thinks winter will never end. That the world will never recover and will slowly rot and pull the sky down with it.

 

Dean has never liked driving less than at this moment.

 

Sam is in the passenger seat flexing his wrists. He’s taken the splints off and is picking compulsively at the rows of stitches in each arm. He swears they don’t itch, but Dean knows that face. That’s the ‘ohfuckigottascratchit’ face.

 

The cuts between the stitches have healed nicely, quickly, but nicely. Thin red lines that will have faded by this time next year. Sam’s skin has always been resilient where Dean’s has been unforgiving. The handprint on Dean’s shoulder is still red, still tender though it’s flattened out a little. He wonders if it’ll ever go smooth and silverpink like his other scars once had and the new ones slowly are, or if it will remain red and ugly forever.

 

“Think I’ll be able to take the stitches out in a few days,” Sam says almost to himself, then carefully begins to wind clean gauze up each forearm. It’s been a bitch keeping the stitches dry and Sam clean. He tried taping garbage bags around his arms and showering at first, that hadn’t ended well. And for about thirty seconds he’d looked at Dean with a pleading, pathetic look on his face and Dean had said simply; ‘Hell no.’

 

It had been different when Sam’s arm was broken. He’d been able to manage with the plastic over his cast and one arm free to use. But with both hands immobilized it was damned near impossible. Don’t even get him started on using the toilet. Christ almighty.

 

Dean reaches over and pats Sputnik’s head. She looks up at him with a doggy smile, tongue lolling out the corner of her mouth. She butts her skull against his side and stretches out, tail and feet in Sam’s lap her head on Dean’s. She stretches, short little limbs straining and lets out a sigh of contentment as she relaxes.

 

Considering the world was ending, there wasn’t much of a line-up of cases. Sam hadn’t been able to find anything that sounded like their kind of business since the Boner (BAHN-ER) haunting earlier in the week. So, Dean drove. Picked a highway that looked interesting and went.

 

They wound up in another gray town in another gray corner of the state in a dingy hotel room.

 

Dean discovered Sputnik was a good gambling piece rather quickly. That when it came to sniping guys at pool they took one look at her, in her little red sweater Sam had picked up in Sioux Falls and her service vest and took Dean for incompetent. They put up large sums of money and he cleaned them out just about every time. Sam thought it was funny as hell. Dean thought it was getting old fast, but wasn’t going to say no to easy money.

 

Sputnik enjoyed the pork rinds and French fries people dropped on the floor and even more so the spilled beer she lapped up while nobody was looking.

 

Sam wouldn’t let Dean drink, tried to control his own drinking when in Dean’s presence. But Sam was a young guy, he liked young women the same as a lot of men. It was hard to keep track of how many shots you’ve had when you’re sitting face to face with a blonde with cleavage like two watermelon in a Victoria’s Secret Angel bra.

 

Dean tried, picked out a few brunettes from the crowd, talked, laughed, laid on the innuendo… but he didn’t feel it. He kept thinking, the whole time he was talking and forcing himself to flirt back at them; ‘Why am I doing this? I don’t want this, why am I doing this?’ until finally, it was like a switch was flipped. One minute he was smiling while some woman—he didn’t even remember her name—talked about the virtues of body piercing when suddenly he just couldn’t make himself grin anymore, couldn’t even look at her. He apologized, withdrew and just— stopped trying all together, unless it would get him free food or answers they needed he didn’t even try. And in those situations he felt like he was made of plastic, the smiles never met his eyes, the words didn’t sound exactly right falling from his lips. He couldn’t even let himself catch the eyes of men that reminded him of Cas anymore. Not with the knowledge that was Castiel seared into his brain.

 

Sam noticed… Of course he did. He’s SAM he’s a grade-A-snoop when he wants to be. He didn’t say anything, but as if to offset Dean’s lack of enthusiasm Sam’s flirting became more overt. He slid easily into slow smiles and low rough tones, looked up through his lashes—Dean wanted to puke.

 

Dean wasn’t sure what to think of it, he didn’t like it, didn’t like the way Sam kept darkening at the edges even though he was acting more and more like his old self… Didn’t like that the blackness was jagged now, stretching inward, seeming to eat up more and more of his brother’s faded color and somewhere far in the back recesses of his mind the memory of Alistair whispered in an acidic hiss, louder and louder with each passing day;

 

_You can’t stop it. He’s too far gone. Soon there won’t be anything left._

 

Dean caught himself, on more than one occasion catching his reflection from the corner of his eye in bar back mirrors and seeing streaks of blood coursing over his skin, bits of flesh peeled back and large hooks hanging in the background with bits of himself clinging to their barbs.

 

He couldn’t let himself flinch, but that didn’t stop it from happening. Didn’t stop Sam from noticing, didn’t stop everyone around him from noticing something was wrong with him.

 

And that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it. There was something WRONG with Dean, something that wasn’t going to heal and he had no idea where to start coping or if it was even possible to try. So, he sat with his back shoved up in a corner booth watching Sam at the bar and feeling his heart begin to race because the room was too full, there was too much noise that was too easily transformed into screams, too many faces and smells and COLOR—

 

Dean pushes himself up and away from the booth and forces himself forward. Sam has perched at the bar talking to this strawberry blonde woman in khakis and a purple polo who works at the restaurant across the street. Dean thought her name was Cristy, no ‘H’ but he really had no idea what they were talking about, couldn’t really make himself care honestly. Whatever it was had Sam’s face lighting up like it hadn’t been in a while, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.

 

Dean didn’t want to interrupt his brother’s ‘conversation’ but he nudged him a little, said he was going back to the room and wanted the keys.

 

It was testament to how engrossed in the conversation Sam was that he didn’t even argue or comment on the sweat beaded on Dean’s brow and upper lip, just nodded and handed over the keys.

 

Dean gave the dog her weekly bath, scrubbed her with a towel and chuckled as she snarled and eyed the dryer viciously as he waved it over her. She liked riding in the car and the radio, didn’t seem to mind the magic fingers if how her head lolled around and her mouth came open when she jumped up beside him was any indication. But vacuums, blenders, hair dryers and air compressors? No.

 

If Dean was going to be honest with himself he would have admitted that he hadn’t slept well since Windom, hadn’t let himself sleep honestly. Too afraid he’ll look over and Sam will have bled out in the night, or that fever would have come back and fried his brother’s brain. But Dean was very rarely ever honest with himself about anything. Not out loud anyway.

 

Without Sam in the room he’s still worried, but it was easier to lie there watching reruns of Next Generation without Sam breathing just a few feet away to distract him. It’s easier to just accidentally… accidentally SLIP into sleep without his full awareness when he’s got the blankets bundled around him, a sort of shield against the world. A buffer that makes everything feel muted and soft and… and warm—

 

Sleeping though, may not have been the best idea he’s ever had. Not tonight. He knew that within two seconds of the dream starting. Knew before that really, because when did things ever go right? He tried to wake himself, fought and twisted and screamed at himself to WAKE UP, but he couldn’t. Maybe he wasn’t really asleep at all.

 

There are hands on his wrists, sharp hard claw like nails digging into his chest cavity, rippingTEARING at anything they can reach, grasping ribs like twigs and bending them back—breaking them away and throwing them to the beasts that salivated and roared for attention, howling and gnawing and chewing, eyes alight and so gleeful.

 

His back is ruined. Cut down to the bone. He’s folded up on himself—can see through one wound that reaches through his abdomen and out his back.

 

There’s a hand in his throat, twisting and tearing and he can’t breathe, can’t fight back, can’t die. He must endure this, he will always live through it, even when he’s nothing but atoms, he will continue to exist and suffer.

 

Alistair is talking playing in the wound where Dean’s genitals had been , tearing out veins and bits of lingering muscle. He’s explaining the importance of nerve centers in the brain. How it’s possible to cause someone to remember things that have never happened simply by playing with these nerves, or to alter someone completely by snuffing out a few.

 

“It’s all electric,” He says, leaning forward to tear a furrow in Dean’s face and lick the blood out of it. “Everything you feel is because of electricity. A fucking biological thunder storm in that cute little fucked up noggin of yours… Even those seizures you’re having are caused by electricity… Imagine what would happen if you got hit by a stun-gun again. You’d fry yourself! What’s that poem? The one you liked so much? Whitman I think… Yes, oh, won’t you sing it for me? You know how much I like to hear you sing.”

 

Dean hears the words in his head, a cadence of breaking bone and rending soul-flesh and that unfaltering TEAR of Alistair’s body into his own. Heavy and ripping him apart from the inside out.

 

His mouth opens and it comes tumbling out amid a wash of blood and chunks of torn flesh.

 

“I—“

 

Dean wakes with a hard jerk. He’s sweating, shaking—doesn’t know where he is. Sam’s standing at the side of his bed with wide eyes and Sputnik’s lead in one hand.

 

Sam’s put the splints back on, he does that at night so he doesn’t roll over on them.  He claimed it had helped his carpal tunnel immensely, Dean didn’t really know what that was.

 

“Dean, you OK?”

 

They’re in a hotel.

 

Indiana.

 

Sam and the strawberry from the bar. Keys—Sputnik’s bath. Dean hasn’t slept well in two weeks. He’d taken his medication and found something about Klingons, he can’t remember really now, only that there wasn’t a case to occupy him and the Valerian root always knocked him on his ass when he was already tired, he—

 

It’s barely two AM. Sam has just returned from the bar or the girl’s house or whatever and was going to give Sputnik a quick walk before he climbed into bed. He’s standing there over Dean, staring at him…

 

And Dean’s got a hand in his pants.

 

He doesn’t want it to be there, feels bile sliding up his throat just thinking about it, but he can’t move because he’s close—everything feels tight and hot and if he hadn’t woken up he would have screamed  he’s sure of it because he knows where that dream was going, even if Alistair was having new conversations with him, he knew what was going to happen. The same as every other time. He would have screamed himself awake with a mess in his shorts and all over his hand and Sammy would have come back running and found him like that.

 

“Get out…”

 

Sam blinks in confusion; “What—“

 

“GET OUT!” His vision swims and everything hurts. Everything HURTS.

 

Sam steps forward then jumps back a little, stunned and Dean knows he can tell. Sam’s eyes flick to the blankets and back to Dean’s face and he KNOWS. He knows because he’s not exactly being subtle. His body is a traitor and Dean, in that moment, hates it. Wonders why Castiel or whoever had rebuilt him, hadn’t just remade him minus this disgusting THING between his legs. Why couldn’t he just gather the courage and cut it off so this never happened again?

 

Oh, Jesus—Jesus Christ, did he just say that aloud?

 

Sam’s eyes are huge and he stumbles backward pulling the dog with him and flees.

 

Dean lays there curled on his side for a long time twisting the blankets, trying to will it away. He thinks of nothing. Thinks of snow and ice and being kicked in the jewels.

 

It doesn’t go away.

 

He sinks his teeth into the scar on his inner lip and bites until he reopens it, digs his nails into his skin, scratches his hips and thighs—

 

It doesn’t go away.

 

His heart is hammering against his sternum. He can’t breathe, he can’t think. Everything is shot with color and so BRIGHT and the pain in his head is overwhelming, but it STILL won’t go away!

 

He has a knife in his jeans pocket, just there… Ten seconds and it will be over. Just ten seconds—

 

Dean imagines Sam finding him like that, emasculating himself because he’s scared. Because it just HURTS too much…

 

No… no.

 

It’s a dream. It means nothing. It’s just a dream…

 

Alistair’s voice cackles in the back of his head and he can feel claws sinking into him—tearing him open.

 

It still won’t go away.

 

There’s something wrong with this, Dean knows it, something wrong in ways it’s not possible for anyone who hasn’t experienced it to understand. Wrong in ways it’s not possible to fully articulate.

 

His hand shakes, pushes beneath the elastic and he folds his free arm over his head, tries to draw his knees up protectively and turn his face away in the same moment. He opens his mouth and bites down, catches his arm under the sleeve of his sweatshirt and doesn’t let go. Feels some kind of weird security in the pain of bruising flesh—

 

He tries not to think, not to conjure up familiar faces. Tries not to think of blue eyes and short untidy hair above a prickly jaw, but he has no control over it. There are two of Him, battling for prime Dean Flesh Property.

 

Alastair bites and tears and Cas holds him close, tells him it’s OK, that he’s here and all the while Castiel stands in the corner wreathed in an aura of light and color and liquid sound with that pensive, focused expression on his face. Like this is some strange human conundrum he simply MUST pick apart and not Dean losing little pieces of himself because in the seven months he’s been back he hasn’t been able to have an orgasm that didn’t happen while he was asleep and being raped in nightmarish HELLISH positions. Or even really think of sex without feeling greasy and disgusting from the inside out. The fact of this—the bold faced, bare bones fact of it is that this couldn’t be worse. Mixed signals in his brain, colors flashing in the world beyond the protective curl of his body. It seems like it won’t ever end  and in his mind’s eye he can see himself pressing the butt of his gun to his chest, barrel below his jaw and pulling the trigger. A volcanic blast of blood and brain matter studded with shards of his skull and clumps of flesh and hair. He can see himself sitting naked on the bathroom toilet and sliding a razor over his skin, watching useless chunks of tissue fall into the water and flushed clean—imagines those cuts on Sam’s arms transported to his own, sitting there watching himself bleed out and all he sees on his face is calm—

 

It’s not over quickly. No. Hell, even in his memories, will never be that merciful. It doesn’t even feel good, just panic bubbling up in his chest and stealing his breath because it may have only been four months to Sam and the rest of the world, but it was forty years to Dean and that changes a person, takes away everything that made them human and leaves something new and horrid in its wake. It leaves him cold and shaking and afraid. He feels vulnerable, exposed and sick that he’s done this to himself and he doesn’t know why he bothered trying to wake himself up at all for the good it’s done. It’s just made it worse… It’s ugly and messy and he thinks he would rather have a handful of rotting brain tissue, thinks he’d rather be stabbed than have to do that again and he lays there laughing at the pathetic fact of it until he realizes he’s been sobbing for close to ten minutes now and every inch of him feels filthy and sore and ready to fly apart at the seams.

 

He stumbles into the bathroom and strips off his clothes, tosses them into the garbage can and climbs into the shower—doesn’t even feel the chill of the water as he gives himself a primary scrub, then turns the hot up until his skin turns red and scrubs again. Drags his nails up the insides of his arms, scratches bloody crescents onto his inner thighs and muses on the virtues of brillo pads before he remembers he doesn’t have any.

 

He feels greasy, alien. Not at home in his skin and he almost welcomes the ache in his head that slices through and steals his breath. What if he fell in the tub and hit his head again, knocked himself unconscious and drowned. What if he cut himself shaving… What if he just… just a little. Nothing that would draw attention to itself, nothing that would bleed for very long. Just something that would hurt and let him know this was real. Let him know this wasn’t Hell. Something dull and physical and HERE—

 

_Sam will find out… He’s a smart little bastard, Dean. He’s sneaky. He’ll find out and it’ll be the last straw. He’ll look you right in the eye and tell you exactly how worthless you are.  He’s so close to it already. Haven’t you noticed how he looks at you? The disgust? The fraying patience… Have you seen how dark he’s turning at the edges? Isn’t it just delicious? It won’t be much longer now until you’ll be able to see it in his eyes. And after that there won’t be anything of your dear little Sammy left. And there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it, Dean. Not a damned thing. You’re too weak, too fragile. Too broken. And as soon as Sam sees exactly how broken you are he’ll realize what a waste of time it is trying to fix you. He’ll leave you because nobody really cares. Eventually they’ll all leave you. Every single one of them._

_If you’re not useful there’s no use in existing in this world of yours, is there. He’ll leave you, Dean. He’ll leave you just like everybody else._

_Why don’t you just do it—the gun’s right there. Just put it in your mouth and pull the trigger. Come back home where it’s warm and toasty. Come back where you make a difference—_

Dean shuts the water off and lurches out, stumbles and slides on the tile the four steps to the toilet and drops to his knees, shoves four fingers into his mouth, scratches and claws until it all rushes back up and drowns the voice in his head.

 

It’s a physical kind of pain, different from Hell and it stops the cycle. Stops everything.

 

Dean breathes in and lets it out.

 

0-0-0

 

Sam comes back after an hour and a half. The lights are off but he doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not. He inches the door open and peers in, ready to spring out again if there’s any sign that Dean isn’t ready for him to return—

 

Dean’s bed is stripped down to the mattress, all his blankets and sheets and pillows piled in the corner.

 

There is a lump in Sam’s bed, pressed close to the wall and unnaturally small considering.

 

“Dean?”

 

Not so much as a twitch.

 

Sam kicks off his shoes and bends to relieve the dog of her vest, lets her sniff around curiously while he strips out of his jacket. “Dean, why are you in my bed?”

 

“’can’t sleep over there,” His voice is muffled, strangely featureless. If the color gray had a sound, that would be it.

 

Sam exhales; “Why’d you pull the sheets off?”

 

“Had to.”

 

Sam rolls his eyes; “That’s disgusting… Did you get it on the—“

 

“It’s fine… Sheets are fine,” He inhales and lets it out, “I can’t, Sam. I just can’t.”

 

Sam sits on the edge of the bed and rubs his face. “You can’t?”

 

“I can’t sleep over there.”

 

Sam nods slowly, pushes aside his disgust and tries to pull one of the blankets off his own bed but Dean’s fingers catch in it and refuse to let go.

 

“No. You—you can’t either. It’s dirty.”

 

“You just said—“

 

“Please.”

 

He says it like he might say ‘hand me that newspaper’ or ‘check the salt lines’. He says it like he’s not asking what he is and Sam stands rooted to the spot, eyes wide and locked on the back of Dean’s head.

 

He can see the curve of Dean’s spine through his t-shirt and abraded red lines scratched into the skin at the back of his neck and elbows. Almost like he’d bathed with a wire brush.

 

Sam wants to ask, wants to know if there’s something he can do to fix it, but he knows there’s not. This isn’t something that can be talked into submission, or dealt with as a team. As much as he wants to take this weight, he can’t and the fact of it hurts somewhere deep in his chest. This might actually be worse than Dean looking up at him, battling sleep and asking him with that terrified high whine in his voice ‘don’t let him get me’ this is worse because they’ve both realized the monster has already done its damage and now they have to deal with the aftermath.

 

Maybe this is it. Maybe this is Dean accepting what Sam had said in Bobby’s Panic Room, this is Dean trying to trust. Asking Sam to watch his back, just for one night, because he’s so scared and hurt he can’t.

 

Sam slides into the bed and presses his back against Dean’s. Doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything. Just pulls the blanket over his shoulder and pats the sheet until Sputnik does her ritualistic three counter clockwise circles before she jumps up and settles herself in the bend of Dean’s knees.

 

It’s quiet.

 

A truck blares its horn on the highway, the heater clicks on and clatters a little before it starts blowing. Sputnik yawns. Out in the parking lot a car door opens and shuts across the plaza and Sam watches the door.

 

Dean presses back into him a little and his voice comes out in a whisper. Just breath shaped like words, clogged and wet and if he’d been able to make any sound they would have been a scream; “I made myself throw up.”

 

Sam swallows a lump in his throat tries not to think of this as a failure, tries not to think of having to make Dean eat again and glancing at his fingers and knuckles for bruises from his teeth every time he walked past. “Why?”

 

Dean curls up a little tighter, shivers; “I don’t know—“

 

“I’m not angry… I—I just want to know what happened to make you hurt yourself?”

 

“I don’t want—“

 

“Just give me the seven second version.”

 

Dean thinks for a moment, swallows, shakes; “It was Him.”

 

Sam tightens his fingers until his wrists ache; “Alistair or… Him?”

 

Dean doesn’t say anything. Sam thinks that’s as much of an answer as he’s going to get.

 

“But, why hurt yourself, Dean, you don’t deserve that.”

 

“Because it’s different… It’s real.”

 

“It’s real?”

 

“It hurts and it’s real… It’s not like the dreams.”

 

Sam breathes in and out; “OK…” He feels like his throat’s about to close off permanently. “Next time though, you come to me. We’ll find something else that works—“

 

“I don’t need your help—“

 

“Well, too bad, you’ve got it anyway… If IT gets bad like that again, you come to me, alright?”

 

He snuffs loudly, rubs his nose on his fist; “Okay.”

 

Sam can feel his heart beating in his neck, can feel a back build of heat and tears searing his sinuses and pulling his throat tight; “Do y—“

 

“No.”

 

He nods, breathes, nods again; “Okay… But if you do, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

 

Dean shudders and nods, doesn’t say anything else for a long time and when he does it’s just a hiss of Sam’s name and silence.

 

It takes a long time for Sam to fall asleep.

 

0-0-0

 

The rest of that week is tense. Dean doesn’t say much, keeps his head down and spends a weird amount of time sharpening his knives or cleaning his guns.

 

It makes Sam uncomfortable in a strange way, he doesn’t like the way Dean looks at the blades or how he unloads and reloads the clips, counts the bullets and fingers each one like he’s trying to memorize it.

 

He takes Dean out to a bar and mentions a poker game in the back room, that the ambulance drivers in the corner by the pool tables had just got paid today. He doesn’t get the kind of reaction he’d been hoping for. Dean plays poker for a while, only wins about five-hundred and calls it a night. He doesn’t seem to like bars anymore, maybe it’s because he can’t drink, maybe it’s because he can’t look at women… or men. Sam’s still trying to wrap his head around that one. He knew Dean never really discriminated, he was a natural flirt, but he’d always seemed uncomfortable when a man smiled at him. Put off maybe.

 

Whoever this guy was that the djinn had created for him, must have been something different, especially for it to still affect his brother like this almost two years later.

 

Sam knew Dean had something, some memento or another from the guy. From the way he had reacted in Windom it was more than likely the manuscript version from Chuck and violently as Sam’s curiosity was chewing at him, he promised himself he wasn’t going to go looking for it. Dean would be more than angry if he did. Dean would be righteously PISSED. Quite literally considering the grace in him.

 

Sam goes out to the bar early on his birthday… alone. Dean slips him a few twenties to pay for the drinks and a three-pack of condoms, just because. He says he’s going to scan the weather reports and see if he can find Castiel because they haven’t heard from him in a while and it’s starting to worry him, but he won’t ever admit that.

 

The weather reports take a grand total of thirty minutes because nothing looks unusual and Dean spends the rest of the evening playing around with his laptop. Changes the background a few times, makes squiggle-fill drawings on Paint until his vision feels like he’s looking through a stained glass window and surfs around for a while trying to work up to looking at porn because he’s got nothing better to do.

 

He spends a grand total of fifteen seconds looking at the GIFs on the front page and closes the window, opens Sam’s computer intent on changing his background to something weird and winds up checking Sam’s search history.

 

It’s not a surprise really, what he finds. He would have been surprised if there had been nothing, but the fact Sam was looking at support groups for rape survivors online was kind of embarrassing while at the same time a bit of a relief. He hadn’t looked himself because really, what was he going to say? How would you explain what had happened to ordinary people? They’d think he was crazy.

 

Dean had spent a lot of time trying to come up with a cover story for it, some kind of excuse just in case he ever got up the courage to try again. An explanation that would sound better than the one he’d given Jamie in Canonsburg.

 

It came down to two things though… Long term abusive relationship, or ‘kidnapped and held captive for a long time’ neither of which were close enough to the truth that he could say it without it sounding like a sad joke in his ears. Because it was kind of a relationship, wasn’t it… he’d willingly sold his soul so hadn’t he asked for it?

 

He closed the windows and sat there with his hands clenched into fists on the tabletop, stared and let his breath shake in his chest as he opened the window again and started paging through the forums, more because he didn’t know what else to do than with any hope of finding something that would help.

 

It was a weakness, he knew it, felt it in his bones. Yet, he couldn’t find a way to push past it. It came back and ate at him like a staph infection. He read, let himself indulge in some sick sense of catharsis, let himself believe that maybe he wasn’t alone, just for a minute—found some weird comfort in the rare male username he found amid the tide of females. Questions and support for faceless people who had no idea of the nightmares walking and talking among them warring for their very souls.

 

Some of it made him want to laugh, some of it made his throat burn and the urge to sink his nails into his flesh grow. Others made him uncomfortable and twice he closed the window only to open it again and force himself to keep reading.

 

Support, they all preached of support, a need to ‘confide in someone’ to ‘reach out’ or ‘vent’. It sounded ridiculous, sounded stupid and weak and what would it help to say it? What would it do to bring someone else in on that kind of pain? All he had was Sam and he couldn’t—he couldn’t put that kind of weight on Sam. Not now, not ever. Bobby would listen… But he’d never be able to look the older hunter in the eye again. He couldn’t put this kind of SHIT on someone else. If he wasn’t able to do this on his own what kind of man was he?

 

Sputnik grunted and pawed at his leg and when Dean looked down at her she had the tip of her tongue poking out between her front teeth, looked kind of like a fat little ball of fuzz straining to pass gas or something. He snorted and rubbed the moisture from his eyes, found her lead and took her out. Located a secluded patch of grass around back of the motel with a smattering of soggy cigarette butts in the brown grass. She sniffed around a while, did her business while Dean inspected the peeling paint on the concrete blocks of the building and the next thing he knew she was sitting at his feet looking up at him with her tooth over her lip, expectant and careless in a way no human could ever be. She would never judge him because of what had happened. Would never look at him as if he were weak or sad or something to be pitied. She was just a little dog and he was a human being. They took care of one another, he made sure she had food and water and a warm place to sleep. She made sure he knew when he was about to ‘clock out’ so to speak, warned him and was there when he needed something to ground him in the confusion.

 

Dean cleared his throat nervously and spoke softly, so as not to be heard by anyone that may pass by. “Castiel said you can talk… Well, like, he can talk to you… I think he’s kinda nuts, but…” He inhaled and let it out again started talking, nonsense really, stupid things, observations about the surrounding scenery. How he still wasn’t sure he was OK with having her around, but she seemed to pull her weight, so he wasn’t going to complain. He talked about how disgusting he thought dog food was, that he’d tried it once as a kid when Sam dared him to and thought he understood why some dogs licked their testicles, “It’s to get rid of the taste of the food… I think if I was a dog I’d do it too…” He swallowed a lump growing in his throat felt his pulse beating in his eyes and gnawed his lip; “I dream about him… About Cas—“ He shifts nervously on his feet and shifts the lead from one hand to the other; “Not Castiel, even if they look alike—and sound alike and shit… But I—I was happy, yanno? There, I was—I was good… Things—things were good. I wish… I wish I’d stayed sometimes… I wish he’d been real, well, more than just to me. He—You would have liked him,” He cleared his throat again and rubbed his hands together, clenched his teeth and said nothing more. Back in the room he dried her feet and chest and didn’t complain when she jumped onto the bed with him while he flipped through TV channels and settled her head on his knee.

 

Sleep comes upon him unannounced. One minute he’s watching some cheap old schlock film and rubbing the sting of salt out of his eyes the next he’s fishing. He knows where he is. A lake in South Dakota Bobby had taken him and Sam to one summer when Dad had left them. Dean can’t remember the name of the lake, not really, something he’d laughed about at first. He’d liked fishing even then, found it peaceful, calming. There was nothing but him, a line and the water. Maybe a fish or two, but this… Bobby had said the lake had been blessed by Natives and as far as he knew not a single monster or nasty came within a five mile radius of it. Dean had always assumed it was Bobby’s way of easing Dean’s tensions as a kid, getting him to relax. But it had always stuck with him. He hadn’t thought about the lake in years. Non since the last time they’d been here the summer after Sam’s tenth birthday.

 

Dean’s standing on the shore, bare foot and ankle deep in the water. Off to his left he can see some bearded guy with two snot nosed kids in too big clothes shrieking because the guy’s just put a worm on the hook. The little one’s crying.

 

He’ll use breadcrumbs from that point onward to spare them the cruelty of worm killing.

 

_“Jesus, you two! ‘S just a worm! You’re actin’ like I kicked your dog or somethin’!”_

 

Dean smiles, remembers the feel of a rod in his hand for the first time, watching the red and white bobber shift and tumble on the surface, that first tug on the line, the wriggling gray scaly fish that had flopped on the shore at his feet and scared Sam so bad the kid had stomped it to death. Then cried while Bobby had scaled and filleted it. Dean remembered Sam puking when the guts had come out and Bobby had explained what the grainy looking bits were.

 

Castiel is beside him. It’s not sudden, it’s like he’s been there the whole time. The water isn’t even disturbed with the angel standing on it. “Dean?”

 

“That’s me isn’t it…” He motions to the kid with the fishing pole. “That’s Bobby, Sam and me.”

 

“Dean, I don’t have much time—“

 

“’S funny—“

 

“Dean!”

 

And suddenly they’re gone and Dean is standing on the shore staring at the empty space where they had been, he frowns and turns slowly to look at the angel, finally fully aware of his presence.

 

Castiel looks frantic, worn, like lately he’s been imitating the worm on the hook, maybe he has.

 

It’s not a long conversation, Dean feels like he’s not hearing all of it, something is pulling in his chest and clouds are gathering on the horizon. Castiel keeps looking toward them warily.

 

It’s confusing, even more so when Castiel stuffs a piece of paper into Dean’s fist and vanishes.

 

Dean doesn’t look at the paper, doesn’t need to, as soon as he touches it he’s awake and the words are burned on the forefront of his mind—ACHE back into his head and he lurches up with a gasp.

 

Sam’s back, doesn’t look like he’s been there long, isn’t even asleep yet.

 

“Dean? What is it?”

 

He swallows bile working its way up his throat; “It’s Cas—Castiel… He’s in trouble.”

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0


	24. Blood Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk what's up with this formatting, how do you take away the extra space between paragraphs?

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

Jimmy Novak is a soft spoken man. He is also not the same color as Castiel and it gives Dean the preverbal willies looking at him and not seeing Castiel. Jimmy eyes him warily, eats quickly with the same gusto of a starving man. Maybe he has been starving.

 

Sam asks the questions, Jimmy answers them. Asks a few of his own, who are you, where am I?

 

“Do you remember anything about being possessed? Anything at all?”

 

Jimmy swallows loudly, flicks his eyes at Dean uncomfortably and back to Sam; “Bits and pieces… I mean, angel inside of you, it’s kind of like being chained to a comet.”

 

“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”

 

He snorts; “Understatement…” Continues eating.

 

Dean can’t help but just stare at him and keep looking for Castiel in all his nooks and crannies. There are traces of the angel, little shimmering glittery bits clinging to the outer edges of Jimmy’s soul. Like when you leave spaghetti sauce too long in a Tupperware container the red of it leeches into the plastic and you can’t get it out no matter what you do.

 

Where has Castiel gone? What did the other angels do to him?

 

Dean focuses on the core of Jimmy’s color and pushes out a little with the grace, flinches when the other man recoils and turns narrowed, angry eyes to him—Pushes back at him and Dean is left dizzy and nauseated by the backlash.

 

Sam’s phone rings a few times, he checks the caller ID and lets it go to voice mail, shakes his head when Dean gives him questioning looks and fishes a package of gummy bears from his bag.

 

Dean sends his brother out for more food when Jimmy finishes off his fifth burger and his stomach is still rumbling.

 

The moment Sam steps out of the room Jimmy’s whole demeanor changes. He seems to puff himself up to his full height and purposefully try to make himself intimidating. Something Castiel does simply by standing there, even slouched with his hair frizzed out and his head cocked to the side Jimmy can’t accomplish with his shoulders squared, his jaw pushed forward and his hands curled into fists.

 

Dean doesn’t say anything at first, not until he realizes the other man is trying to puff himself up to make himself look powerful. “You, Okay, buddy?” Dean sits down on his bed and pulls out his computer, flips it open and checks the weather reports for the last twenty-four hours in the immediate area, finds a freak electrical storm and begins combing the nationwide map for similar occurrences.

 

“I am not your ‘buddy’.”

 

Dean holds up his hands and snorts derisively; “Okay, whatever you say, you’re just kind of… LOOMING.”

 

Jimmy doesn’t say anything, looks like he’s contemplating bolting for the door but Sputnik is standing in his way, silent with her head lowered, dark eyes locked on him.

 

Turns out the dude’s got a wife. A KID. He’s also been missing for eight months. Report says his wife saw him standing outside on the walk one minute, the next he was just gone without a trace.

 

Sam comes back and while Jimmy’s eating, Dean steps outside to talk to him. It isn’t a comfortable conversation. Sam makes a valid point. Dean doesn’t want to admit it, but he really does. Jimmy is far less understanding. In fact, for as calm and collected as he acts he is obviously and truly pissed off. It shows when he gets in Dean’s face, waves his hands around and stands to his full height, like maybe that one inch of difference between them is a mile and he’s running at it.

 

Dean can feel it though, with every word Jimmy is pushing at him, shoving, doing more than throwing words, he’s using that little sugar coating of whateveritis Castiel left on him like a fucking battering ram. Pushing and PUSHING.

 

Jimmy isn’t even shouting. His voice is raised but Dean’s spoken louder trying to question witnesses so it isn’t that. But for whatever reason, something the guy’s doing is working because Dean feels each word like a physical blow to his gut.

 

Maybe it’s the way Jimmy’s talking down to him like only dad’s do, or perhaps it’s the fact that the face and the voice are so CLOSE it’s getting under Dean’s skin even more than if it really were Castiel talking to him. Whatever it is though, it’s enough.

 

One second Jimmy’s talking quickly, has his hands curled lifted and held in like the salesman he is, expectant and ready to shake your hand or show you his wares, the next his face is scrunched up and he turns his head and finds Sputnik in the corner of the room; “What the hell is wrong with that dog!”

 

Dean and Sam turn in unison and find her looking at them from her cushion. She’s got her tooth over her lip again eyes on Dean. It’s not her alert bark. Not really, but it’s close enough to make Dean nervous and the pounding ache building in his head to multiply when he lets out the breath he’s been holding.

 

Sam moves, goes for his bag and pulls out the log book, makes note of it and for about thirty seconds everything is quiet. Jimmy watches with his brows pulled in and his hands still up, tracks Dean as he moves to his bed and starts pulling at his shoe laces.

 

It’s routine now. Has become some weird non-issue between him and Sam. It’s just something they deal with.

 

Dean doesn’t even really feel embarrassed more as annoyed. He finds a grove in the middle of the mattress and tucks his left arm around his middle, finds it’s easier on both of them if he just lies down and takes it like a man. Funny as it is. He’s less likely to fall over or bang against a wall if it turns out to be one of the more violent ones.

 

Jimmy has stepped closer, is watching almost curiously through his anger. “What’s happening?”

 

Dean snorts; “You get dinner and a show.”

 

Sam rolls his eyes; “Christ you’re morbid,” He exhales and looks up at Jimmy tapping the pen against the pages of the log; “Dean’s epileptic… That—“ He motions to Sputnik; “Was close enough to her alert bark to worry me… He hasn’t had one in about three weeks now, which is awesome, but…” He shrugs, “It happens sometimes.”

 

Jimmy hesitates before he speaks again; “Shouldn’t he be in a hospital?”

 

“No, as long as he comes out of it OK, it’s fine. He hasn’t had a Big One yet and the ones he does have usually don’t affect him long term any more than a migraine would.”

 

“Sometimes that’s all it is,” Dean says from behind his hand.

 

Jimmy paces nervously, babbles, argues with Sam, sneaks sidelong glances at Dean almost as if he’s nauseated by the bare fact that something he hasn’t experienced before is happening beyond the realm of his control.

 

It’s a normal reaction that seems strange and inexcusable to Sam and Dean who have been taught since they were young enough to understand that control starts from within and as long as you can remain calm and THINK you can overcome anything. Even if only by sheer stubbornness and force of will. Panicking does nothing except make you vulnerable. And vulnerability is inexcusable.

 

It isn’t that bad, in all truth it’s one of the more mild fits Dean’s had. Weakness in his limbs and tingling numbness in his fingers is the extent of the physical aspect… It’s the rest that makes it bad. It’s the sudden CRUSH of color and sound and sensation as his vision slips without his permission that makes every inch of his skin BURN from the contact with everything else.  He feels nauseated from the sensory overload and Sam has to brace him up on the edge of the bed with a cold cloth on the back of his neck and the waste basket between his feet.

 

Every sound hurts, every flicker of light or color near him sends an electric current ripping through him, leaves him dry heaving with his hands over his ears to block out the NOISE of it all.

 

Sam’s phone starts ringing from across the room and it’s like someone’s stuck Dean’s head in a bell and started shooting at it. He groans, vomits and digs his nails into his scalp hoping to deaden the sound, but it doesn’t help, it lingers, even after Sam makes the phone shut up.

 

Jimmy dry heaves himself a few times and hides in the bathroom until it’s over, until Sam comes in about twenty minutes later for a clean wet towel and a glass of water.

 

It’s awful and Dean hates it, but he’s just so glad it’s over. Even if the rasp of his own clothing against his skin feels like barbed wire. He kicks his jeans off under the blankets, wants to submerge himself in cold water for a while to deaden his nerves and find some kind of relief but Sam won’t let him, makes him swallow a few of those bitter valerian capsules and some Dramamine to help with the nausea then sits there until Dean’s body relaxes and he’s sure his brother’s asleep before he turns to the stranger with the familiar face.

 

Jimmy doesn’t say anything for a long while, just sits there on the fold away with his hands laced together between his knees watching. When he does speak it’s hollow sounding, concerned but in a formal way, like your neighbor is concerned about your great aunt’s recent colonoscopy.  “You do that often?”

  

Sam finishes detailing the episode in the log book and pages back through the last few months; “A couple of times. It’s not any easier than it was in the beginning, might not ever be easy, but it’s not so much of a surprise anymore.”

 

“What happened?”

 

Sam thinks for a moment, wonders what is safe to say and what isn’t; “Head injury.”

 

“Head injury?”

 

“It—it’s not really my story to tell,” He doesn’t look up, just puts the pill bottles and book away and make sure Sputnik is within easy reach when Dean wakes up.

 

“He gonna be OK?”

 

“Yeah… Cranky as hell, but he’ll be fine.”

 

Jimmy breathes in deeply and lets it out, pushes the topic away and rubs his face tiredly.

 

“You should get some rest.”

 

The man nods, shrugs out of his coat, loosens his tie and toes off his shoes, turns his back to the Winchesters and rolls under the blankets.

 

Sam waits… and waits. Wants to make sure Jimmy is asleep before he leaves the room, wants to make sure Dean is safe… Then he palms his phone and creeps out, shuffles to the vending machines and plugs in a couple dollars in quarters for some skittles and a coke. Exhales heavily and punches in a number on his phone.

 

Ruby answers on the first ring; _“What the hell, Sam. Do you think this is funny? I’ve been trying to call you for a month—A MONTH and—“_

 

“Listen,” He speaks softly, low, calm. “I think I found something… It’s going to take a little time, but it’s going to be a better weapon against Lilith than what we—“

 

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

 

Sam inhales, grinds his teeth and glances around to make sure nobody and nothing can hear him before he speaks; “Consecration by Grace.”

 

Ruby says nothing for a full five seconds; “Are you shitting me?”

 

“No, it—It worked against Alistair, so—“

 

“You’ve got an angel willing to juice up weapons for you?”

 

Sam leaned his back against the coke machine and tore into the package of skittles; “Not an angel, no… Dean.”

 

Ruby whispers almost to herself, something genuinely surprised and Sam feels a stab of pride in his chest.

 

“Blunder Boy’s making it work?”

 

Sam snorts; “Kind of, yeah.”

 

“What do you mean, ‘Kind of’?”

 

“Well, there isn’t much of it IN THERE, so he’s gotta, yanno… He’s gotta  go at it a few times to get the job done.”

 

She rolls her eyes, Sam can feel it; “I’m not interested in his sex life, Sam—“

 

“Oh, ew…” He wrinkles his nose; “Jesus.”

 

“You walked right into that one, I make no apologies. Demon, remember? I had to.”

 

“Ha-ha.”

 

She exhales noisily; “Okay, so… you’ve still got the blood though.”

 

He looks down and scuffs his shoe against the pavement; “I haven’t been… We could have something that would work within a week with this and I’ve been training up for months and I’m still not ready… I was thinking we might as well go for the overkill.”

 

“But Dean’s OK, with it, right? You—you actually talked to him about this?”

 

Sam bit his lip; “The grace thing, yeah… but he—he doesn’t need to know about… about the other thing.”

 

“Good… I mean, why tell him if you’re not doing it anymore,” She hesitates, “Sam?”

 

He hums, doesn’t really say anything around a mouthful of sugar.

 

“You’re OK? I mean… You’re not hurting or anything?”

 

“No… No, I’m good actually.”

 

She sighs; “Okay… Call me when you’ve got it… I’m going lion hunting.”

 

Sam nodded; “Do I have to tell you to be careful?”

 

She scoffed; “Please,” and hung up.

 

0-0-0

 

Sam feels like an idiot.

 

Two minutes. He was gone for two minutes, had his eye on the door almost the whole time and somehow Jimmy Novak had slipped away.

 

Dean was pissed, cranky AND pissed, which meant life was even more miserable for Sam Winchester.  His wrists hurt from having to drive, his head hurt from listening to Dean bitch and on top of that he’s pretty sure all the sugar lately has given him a cavity because he’s got a growing toothache on the bottom left side, back behind his molars.

 

Damn it all.

 

“Hey guys—“

 

Sam nearly takes the driver’s side mirror off on a passing car and Dean punches him hard in the shoulder for it. “EYES! ROAD! GOT IT?”

 

Sam gives him the finger.

 

Anna flexes her hands on the back of the seat; “Should I come back?”

 

“No, no… Perfect timing,” Dean motions with the flat of his hand; “Maybe you can clarify what’s more important; watching the angel’s vessel or getting a fucking coke.”

 

Sam grumbles and Dean scoffs;

 

“And SKITTLES, isn’t that right? Can you taste the rainbow now, Sammy?”

 

“You would know—“

 

Dean swings at him with a limp palm, more an insult than an urge to hurt him, although that’s there too. Sam slaps back at him and Anna taps out another cadence on the seat; “Still here guys.”

 

Dean turns to look at her and rubs his forehead; “Is it an angel thing?”

 

She blinked; “What?”

 

He motions; “The rain coat… Is it an angel thing or just a You and Castiel thing?”

 

“Not really the appropriate time to talk fashion, Dean…” She turns and looks at Sam; “You let Jimmy get away?”

 

“Dean was there too!”

 

“He was unconscious, he has an excuse.”

 

Dean grinned, smug.

 

She doesn’t even turn to look at him, just speaks; “Stop gloating.”

 

Sam snorts.

 

Anna regards him quietly for a moment, “Sam, you look…” She blinks, looks again; “Better.”

 

“Better?”

 

Dean snorts; “Now who’s being inappropriate.”

 

“Different… but, better.”

 

Anna doesn’t tell them anything they don’t already know. Cas is gone, dragged back to Heaven by the God Squad. Reconditioning. It’s things neither of them want to hear, but need to in the same moment.

 

Castiel is in trouble, big trouble. Dean listens and tries not to think of his Cas in similar trouble. Tries not to think of that familiar face pulled tight in pain, hurt like Dean had been hurt but by things that were supposed to be good and kind and loving.

 

What kind of world was it when Angels tortured other angels? It—he felt sick, SQUEEZED his hands together and tried to push that part of himself that considered his Cas and Castiel the same thing out of his head. They weren’t the same, would never be the same and it was wrong to hope for it. It was wrong because Castiel was and never could be Cas. Ever.

 

Anna is there and talking and gone faster than should be possible and Dean punches Sam in the shoulder again for good measure, just to have something to do with his hands. Sam hits him back and Dean welcomes the blunt hurt of it as a distraction. Folds one hand over his mouth and focuses on the world rushing by outside the window. Tries not to think about anything and fails spectacularly.

 

0-0-0

 

It’s a long drive. Too long. Dean nags. He doesn’t do it often, but he’s good at it, somehow manages to convince Sam to go just a few miles per hour faster and it’s a good thing he does too.

 

Jimmy’s on his back with a demon on his chest choking the life out of him, while another holds a knife on his daughter.

 

They’re ugly sons of bitches. The one possessing the guy is smaller, thin, whip like with razor wire studding the length of its spine and the tail it’s wrapped around the guy’s chest. There is no soul in the demon’s mouth and Dean doesn’t hesitate slitting it’s throat. The woman is in the same condition, dead already, probably for weeks now, with a demon the size of a linebacker crammed into her. It’s bursting out of her at certain points, hunched up like an adult trying to fit into a child’s snow suit. All knobby scarred skin and long sharp claws. It’s face is flat, almost pug like, scrunched and hideous above a wide cavern of a mouth dripping with acid. Dean draws back to throw the knife at it but pain lances back through his right eye and into his head, like he’s been shot and the knife goes wide, lodges in the wall and Sam is shouting. There are hands under his arms and Dean’s being dragged back.

 

Dean hears the demon smoke out of its host, a roar that rocks the very air and a moment later Sam comes out of the house at a run, knife sliding into the sheathe on his belt.

 

It’s a long ride, again.

 

The Novak’s cling together in the back seat and Sam hunches over the wheel, scowling at the road. Dean isn’t sure how long it takes before the world stops glowing around him and the pain in his head recedes. But he keeps his eyes closed for most of it, grunts out answers when Sam talks to him and scratches Sputnik’s head when she climbs into his lap.

 

Too much excitement for one day, yeah, that has to be it.

 

It isn’t a pretty conversation. Hell, it isn’t even a nice one and as blunt and cold as Sam seems, it needs to be said.

 

Sam picks a parking garage, hotwires an old eighty-six celebrity for Amelia and Claire. Dean tries not to watch Jimmy’s face in the rear view mirror as they drive away but it’s hard to do. It’s difficult to look away because Cas had worn that same expression just seconds before Dean had stabbed himself to escape the djinn’s spell. Like he’d known…

 

Dean dozes for a while, feels strangely drained. He can’t sleep, won’t let himself because every time he gets close he sees Alistair wearing Cas’s face GRINNING down at him and bile rises in his throat.

 

Sam’s phone ringing breaks whatever tenuous hold on bonelessness Dean’s had and Sam shoves the monstrous button riddled contraption into his hands; “What do you want me to do with it?” Dean grumbles and rubs his face, squints and has to fight with the thing to get it answered. “too many fuckin’ buttons,” he presses it to his ear; “Hello?”

 

Dean doesn’t know why they’re surprised. They’re dealing with demons after all. Demons have no compassion. They will do whatever it takes to break you, including possessing your wife and making you listen while they break your daughter’s fingers one by one.

 

Dean thinks, maybe he can see a little bit of indignant fury mixed with the fatherly rage and fear in Jimmy’s face.

 

They meet in an abandoned steel factory outside of Chicago.

 

Dean tries to remain calm but Jimmy’s pushing at him again with the powder coating of angel Castiel left in him. It’s more violent now than it had been earlier, like stabs instead of punches. Dean half expects the guy to leave bloody wounds in his chest.

 

“They’re expecting you to come alone. That’s exactly what you’re gonna do.”

 

“We’ll work our way through the catwalks. We’ll be right behind you,” Sam pops the trunk and hands Dean a box of iron core bullets, starts stuffing salt rounds into his pockets.

 

Dean scrubs a trickle of sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his jacket and glances up at Jimmy where he’s standing staring at the factory with his shoulders bunched up defensively and his hands balled into fists. “All you gotta do is stay calm and stall, let us do our job—“

 

“Stay calm?” Jimmy turns at them with an exasperated expression on his face, jabs a finger in Dean’s chest and motions wildly over his shoulder at the factory; “Those are DEMONS in there, you’re loading a GUN!” He takes a step back and comes forward again; “You’re going to be SHOOTING around my wife and daughter! How the hell do you expect me to stay calm!”

 

“You stay calm because you have to, understand? Those ARE demons in there and they won’t hesitate to rip out throats just for shits and giggles. Now you tell me what’s more dangerous.”

 

Jimmy’s face contorts and he shoves forward at Dean again, berating him like one of those wrestlers on TV, pushing and pushing and pushing—“So that’s it? I’m supposed to trust YOU not to screw this up? You can’t even look at me without thinking about HIM can you! You don’t give a shit about me, you just want your Cas back and I’m standing in your way!”

 

Dean gapes at him, can’t speak—doesn’t have time because Jimmy’s not done.

 

“I don’t remember much but I remember THAT! It’s all you ever think about! It’s like a rave party next door in a quiet neighborhood! I can’t BELIEVE some of the filth you’ve got floating around in your head! But you know the worst thing? He doesn’t—“ Jimmy doesn’t even get to finish his sentence because Sam’s shotgun cocks loudly and he levels it right in the older man’s face.

 

“My brother told you to stay calm… If you don’t listen to him, I’m going to knock you unconscious and lock you in the trunk while we go in there and save your family.”

 

Jimmy stares at him, draws himself up to his full height, tries to look intimidating… and deflates like a balloon. He doesn’t look at Dean, but he apologizes, rubs his hands through his hair, flattens it down, and tries unsuccessfully to collect himself. He walks away after a moment, says he needs a minute.

 

Sam waits until he’s out of sight before he turns to Dean, just looks at him and waits.

 

“Sam, I… He—“

 

Sam clears his throat, tries to offer an escape; “Can it wait until tomorrow?”

 

Dean’s eyes are on the ground, shoulders hunched hands shaking. He exhales and shakes himself out, forces himself to relax; “Yeah… Yeah, it can wait.”

 

It is not a good night.

 

It is not an easy rescue.

 

Dean feels the bullet that punches through Jimmy’s stomach as if it had been his own. He feels the immensity that is Castiel fill the room through the slight body of Claire Novak and watches the world end in her father’s eyes.

 

Dean hates it. Hates himself a little and when it’s over, when those words spill from Castiel’s lips as once again he’s concealed within Jimmy’s body and Clair is sobbing into her mother’s shoulder. He hates himself a little more.

 

It’s cold, in the warehouse, but colder still is the look in those familiar eyes, lit from within like a flashlight under a blanket. Denim blue and starlight snuffed out behind clouds.

 

Dean reaches for him, feels something in him shaking and reaching out beyond the physical. Searching. Easy and casual and pleading.

 

Please… please, Cas… Please.

 

He lets his fingers hang there, casual and easy, just hooked on Castiel’s… and they feel so cold, lifeless beyond the flesh.

 

“Cas…”

 

"I learned my lesson while I was away, Dean,” He looks down where their hands are joined, “I serve heaven, I don't serve man,” knits his brows and pulls away as if burned, “And I certainly don't serve you."

 

The angel turns and is gone in a rush of wings.

 

Dean doesn’t speak for a long time.

 

Sam drives. The radio is silent. The road screams beneath the tires like a tortured soul.

 

The world is cold and black shot with glittery lights amid the fog, dawn is still hours away but Dean thinks he can feel it growing on the horizon, empty and gray and hopeless and feels the words seething in his chest, feels Sam sitting there quiet and unquestioning, blameless like he has no right to be.

 

Dean wants him to shout, to rage and question and demand answers because then maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much, but he doesn’t. Sam just sits there quietly, not expecting anything, patient in a way he never has been before.

 

Dean bites his lip until he tastes blood. Scratches first his neck, then his wrists and finally digs his nails into the scar on his shoulder and the next thing he knows he’s sobbing outright and can’t make himself stop.

 

It’s terrifying, to suddenly be out of control like this. Maybe it’s been building for a while, maybe it’s just everything hitting him all at once. He doesn’t know, doesn’t understand and that makes it so much worse.

 

Sam pulls over, sits there and tries not to watch, wants to comfort but can’t. So he just waits. He lets Dean pull his fraying edges back together and get a grip on them before he starts prodding.

 

Dean pulls his knees up and covers his face with his left hand while his right continues its scratching and Sputnik paws at him helplessly, only to be pushed away.

 

Sam takes her lead and draws her out, walks with her to the edge of the road where the grass is still dead from the leftover road salt and waits until Dean uncurls a little in the front seat. It takes the better part of thirty minutes but it does eventually happen and Sam climbs back into the car with the dog.

 

She curls up in the foot well between Dean’s feet, leans herself into the wedge of space between his shins and Dean squeezes his fingers even more tightly together where they’re clenched between his knees.

 

He sits there for a while motionless, then rubs his knuckles under his nose; “I should be upset the guy lost his family, but instead I’m fuckin’ cryin’ over someone who was never real to begin with,” He laughs, but it doesn’t sound like one.

 

“Dean,” Sam inhales bows his head a little; “We don’t have to do this now.”

 

“I don’t want you digging—“

 

“I won’t. I promised I wouldn’t—“

 

“Just like you promised you wouldn’t use your psychic bullshit?”

 

Sam looks at him earnestly; “I won’t look… This—this is different. I won’t look until you want me to—and before you say it; If you don’t want me to I won’t.”

 

Dean stares at him, tense and defensive and huddled against the door like he’s afraid of Sam; “Why?”

 

And Sam says it; “Because I’m not a demon. This is hurting you and I’m not going to hurt you like that.”

 

Dean looks at him, jaw clenched and silent, nails digging into his wrists until blood cakes under them. His breath jerks in suddenly and comes out slow and he looks away, focuses on Sputnik, maybe he’s speaking to her instead of Sam, but maybe that’s easier, maybe for the moment Sam needs to be the voice of the dog, not Dean’s brother.

 

“It was Cas… HE was Cas… A-and I wanted to stay.”

 

0-0-0

 

Sam stands watch again, it feels strange to be NEEDED like this. An urge under his skin and in his bones to PROTECT. It’s always been there under the surface, buried by the anger of Dean’s constant overbearing WATCHFULNESS. How Sam had always felt powerless… Enraged that Dean felt he needed to wrap his life around Sam’s and take away every decision to ‘Keep him safe’.

 

Is that what Dean was feeling now? That vulnerability? That loss of control and meaning?

 

Is this what it was like for Dean all those nights they’d spent on the road, putting himself, a physical barrier between the danger and his little brother?

 

Sam felt it like a knot in his gut.

 

How did Dean do this on a regular basis? How did he handle having another person’s life in his hands so elegantly? So effortlessly?

 

It was different on hunts, when they were protecting some civilian or another. It was their job, they were equipped for it. It was an entirely different thing when Sam knew Dean was better suited for this position and had trusted SAM with his wellbeing anyway.

 

For lack of a better word… it sucked.

 

Yes, it was a little bit of a power trip, but Sam was intelligent enough and wary enough to know that this was a big deal. This was SERIOUS.

 

Dean wasn’t sick, wasn’t physically hurt in a way that would keep him from being able to defend himself. Dean was hurt on the inside, in places that couldn’t be stitched or bandaged or relocated by force and it was so bad he couldn’t handle it. He PHYSICALLY couldn’t handle it!

 

Sam sat on the end of the bed, adrenaline shooting through his veins and watched the door, watched salt grains shifting on the draft and got up twice to make sure the line held.

 

Dean slept. Deep, exhausted. Sam hoped it was dreamless prayed for that mercy at least, but knew it was impossible from the way Dean’s whole body curled and shifted and shivered, soft whining noises in the back of his throat.

 

It was worse now than it had been those first few weeks after Dean had returned. Sam didn’t know how much more of this Dean could take before he snapped, before the mental strain just became too much and he politely BROKE.

 

His mind roared, calculated the odds of Dean not trying to kill himself. Calculated the odds of Dean succeeding if he tried. Worked through different scenarios that didn’t involve Sam never leaving his brother alone again and found they were few and far between.

 

It came down to one fact and one fact only. Dean needed HELP… and there was no way to get it for him. Not the kind he truly needed anyway.

 

Sam shivered, felt small and ineffectual as he turned to look at Dean, brought his knees up and hugged them to his chest.

 

Dean needed help in a way he couldn’t make himself ask for, didn’t know how to ask for and maintain his sense of self. But Dean wanted it, he wanted out of this. Sam saw it in his eyes in the car, had seen the way Dean’s face had crumbled as he’d spoken and listened while Sam had replied.

 

They hadn’t been able to look one another in the face, how the hell was Sam supposed to help if Dean couldn’t even look him in the face?

 

Dean wasn’t going to be amenable to much when it came to therapy. He was too stubborn and too distrustful. The only thing that had seemed to work in that nightmarish situation had been the dog. She’d looked up at Dean innocently, without malice and listened even if she hadn’t understood what he’d been saying. She, like the car, was not going to think less of Dean for what had happened, or how he felt. Sam could say that he wouldn’t, but when it came down to brass tacks, as it were, he knew there were some things that Dean needed to say that Sam didn’t want to hear. Wouldn’t be able to listen to and not react to. Because that’s what Dean needed right now, he needed someone to listen that wouldn’t try to hug him, wouldn’t try to tell him it was going to be OK, because those were fools hopes. Dean didn’t need a hug and he certainly didn’t need Sam looking at him differently.

 

It was stunning, to realize Dean needed something that Sam wasn’t capable of giving him. Not by any fault of his own, but simply by virtue of Sam being too close to the situation. Too close to Dean.

 

It took the ‘fun’ out of being the one in charge real quick.

 

Sam waited until Dean had woken up before he said anything, before he even so much as moved.

 

Dean swallowed his morning medication and set about silently brushing his teeth, bare toes curled into the tile of the bathroom floor, shoulders hunched defensively.

 

Sam paused in the doorway, passed his toiletry case back and forth between his hands; “Hey… uh—“

 

Dean’s cadence faltered, but picked up again and his eyes locked somewhere around Sam’s left eyebrow.

 

Sam looked down at his hands again; “If I were able to find someone—someone trustworthy—who would listen and n-not freak out… would you consider, yanno—talking to them?”

 

“You mean like a shrink?”

 

“Not necessarily… just someone to talk to,” He wetted his lips and looks up to meet Dean’s eyes again; “You’re not gonna talk to me about it, or Bobby and there’s only so much that Sputnik can do… but you need to get this out. You’re hurting yourself,” His eyes flick to the bloody crescents on Dean’s wrists and away again, “You’re HURTING yourself, Dean… and if having your back means making you help yourself, then I’ll do it. I can’t lose you again, alright? Not like this.”

 

Dean stares at him, finishes cleaning his teeth and spits a gob of foam into the sink, turns on the tap and rinses his mouth, doesn’t look up again but presses his palms into the rim of the sink as if to hold himself up. “I can’t bring some shrink into this, Sam—“

 

“It doesn’t have to be a shrink… just someone who’ll listen and not freak out.”

 

Dean snorts, “Yeah, good luck with that.”

 

Sam sighs and lets his shoulders sag in desperation, won’t look away now that he’s got Dean’s eyes on his. It’s a dominance thing, he and Dean have fought like this since they were kids, first one to blink loses.

 

But right now this is more than just a game. Right now this is important and Sam can’t let himself look away. “You don’t deserve to hurt like this. If I can find someone who’ll listen, will you please—PLEASE talk to them. Not for me, not for Bobby… for YOU. Do this for yourself. _Please.”_

 

Dean stares at him for a moment longer, uncomfortable and twitching his hands for lack of something to distract himself with. In the end it’s not because Sam can stare longer without blinking, or any number of other excuses he makes so he doesn’t have to feel responsible for this act of ‘selfishness’. Dean looks away and rubs his face, rinses his toothbrush and bobs his head while he swallows past the knot in his throat; “Okay… yeah, okay.”

 

0-0-0

 

Dean dressed and they went across the street to the diner for breakfast. Neither of them ate much, Sputnik got most of the leftovers but Dean tried and Sam tried as well so that’s all that mattered.

 

Sam called Bobby and told him what had happened with Jimmy, he left out what had transpired between Castiel and Dean, instead told the older man they were going to cool off for a few days, watch the demonic omens and would check in by Friday.

 

Bobby is suspicious but doesn’t ask many questions and the ones he does ask aren’t because he’s being nosy but because he actually cares.

 

Sam finds something mind-numbing on TV, old Buggs Bunny Cartoons are good for that.

 

Dean cleans his gun twice and doesn’t say a word, it’s like he’s waiting for the backlash. Sam gets it, he does. He just wishes he didn’t.

 

Sam finds a weather report from the week before, temperatures had jumped up twenty degrees in less than an hour in disregard for the forecast then plummeted thirty degrees two hours later. The newspaper was calling it a freak heat wave but it had demon activity written all over it.

 

“I’m gonna go down town, ask around and see if anyone remembers something weird happening, maybe take a peek in the police database… You be OK here?”

 

Dean nodded, didn’t look up from his weapons. 

 

“I’ll call you if I find anything.”

 

He nods again.

 

“Well, don’t get so excited,” Sam changes quickly into his fed suit and runs a comb through his hair.

 

Dean snorts and says his fly is down.

 

It’s quiet the room feels empty and Dean feels his eyes moving around and catching on shadows, the play of sunlight through the bushes outside the motel window.  They look like hands and claws and he shudders, pulls the curtains and tosses Sputnik’s ball for a while. Turns on Sam’s computer and scans a few more pages of forum crap, turns it off and boots up his own, decimates minesweeper and nearly jumps out of his skin when his phone rings.

 

“Jackpot,” Sam says and there’s a grin in his voice; “Heat wave happened three weeks ago in Eerie Indiana too. Three teenagers went missing from a four-H meeting… Two weeks ago it skips to Peoria where a woman named Nancy Coulter goes missing—witnesses say she was seen entering a supply closet at the day-care where she works but she never came out again and last week here in Galesburg, the heat descended and took away Evan Knox, a ten-year-old boy who disappeared from his dining room. And get this, all the victims had one thing in common.”

 

“Which is?” Dean takes back the ball and throws it toward the bathroom, Sputnik lunges after it.

 

“The teenagers were playing with Tarot cards, Nancy Coulter was into palm reading and Evan was known as the town’s psychic wonder boy.”

 

Dean snorts; “Demons kidnapping psychics?”

 

“Looks like it… And guess which town just reported a freak heat wave.”

 

Dean snorted; “Where?”

 

“Prophetstown… I’m—“ And the line sizzled, drowning out Sam’s voice.

 

“Sam?” Dean wrestled the ball away again, wrinkled his nose at the slobbery bits and threw it; “Sam, you’re cuttin’ out.”

 

The sizzling grew louder and Dean thought he could hear Sam saying his name, but then it cut out completely.

 

He blinked, waited a moment and called Sam back. There was no answer.

 

He called again… Nothing.

 

Again.

 

Nothing.

 

Dean sent a text and went for his bag, shook out his pills onto the tabletop and counted them, he had three more days worth of them left and a week’s of the valerian root if he stuck to the two-a-day thing he’d been doing before yesterday.

 

His phone rang as he was counting them back into the bottles and Dean picked it up, “Sam?”

 

“Dean?”

 

“What happened, you drop your damned phone again—“

 

“Dean…” Sam’s breath hitched, pulled tight and thin, reedy over the line; “T-they want you to come alone.”

 

0-0-0

 

The waitress was a pretty woman in her mid-thirties, blonde with big brown eyes. Her name tag said ‘Emmaline’ and she had just the slightest accent. Minnisota. Her vowels pulled just a little but Sam liked it. It suited her and her jaunty little ponytail.

 

He flirted, she flirted back… He didn’t notice when her eyes met the cooks and blew out to black.

 

0-0-0

 

Dean’s hands shook, rattled his ring against the steering wheel where he’d only just been able to put it on without fearing it would fall off again. His heart thumped rapidly in his chest and Sputnik whined from the seat beside him, sensing his agitation.

 

The LED sign in front of the bank read the current temperature was eighty-one. Too high for May in this part of the country. There were still gray lumps of snow in the corners of parking lots studded with gravel and sluggishly melting on the wilted dead grass.

 

Psychics. The demons had been kidnapping psychics and they’d nabbed Sam.

 

Cold Oak flashed behind Dean’s eyes and everything was blurry and BRIGHT around him.

 

It could be happening again, they could be rounding up more kids and doing horrible things to them.

 

Sam’s GPS had put him five miles outside of town. That was a lot of distance to cover in the three minutes it had taken between Sam’s phone cutting out and the call. The demons had to be powerful if they could just grab up people and transport them wherever they wanted. At the very least Crossroads Powerful. And to cause this kind of temperature fluctuation it’s likely to be quite a few of them… Or one big one.

 

What if it was Lilith? What if this was it? What if this was their only shot and Castiel had been brainwashed in Sunday School and Dean was going up against a Whiteyes alone?

 

Sam.

 

It was SAM.

 

He wasn’t going to leave his brother to be massacred by demons. Not going to happen.

 

No. En-OH!

 

Jesus… Jesus Christ.

 

It was an old body shop from the looks of it. Disused and hidden back from the road by a growing copse of young oak barely the thickness of Dean’s wrist. Dean parked the car and made sure the windows were rolled down enough that Sputnik wouldn’t suffocate and climbed out.

 

The windows were boarded up and the bay doors were padlocked, rusted and immovable. He could feel the demons in there, writhing, like the sucking vortex of a whirlpool, a current that grabbed onto the grace in his chest and PULLED. HUNGERED.

 

Dean didn’t have the element of surprise, so he went in the front door, gun raised.

 

There were six of them. Four crowded around something hanging from the ceiling, hands stained in blood and two were closer, watching him with black eyes and smiling faces.

 

It took Dean a grand total of three seconds to realize what the thing hanging from the ceiling was and it only took that long because his face was one massive laceration. Bludgeoned by what looked like a tire iron, Dean saw blood and muscle and bone and the slack black cavern where Sam’s right eye used to be.

 

“Hello, Dean!” She was blonde, would have been cute. Emmaline, or so her nametag said. There was an artistic splatter of blood across her face and chest and a slick clot of it on her brow. Her tights were torn in the knee and Dean could see a sharp wedge of bone protruding from her shin, only the sheer power of the demon within her keeping her upright.

 

And what a demon it was. Still vaguely humanoid it had obviously once been a woman but all flesh had been burned smooth and pale and shiny, fingers eaten back to bony claws, teeth broken to sharp jagged points, lids cut away to reveal blackened staring ORBS like a mouse half crushed in a trap. She was one of the few demons who had horns, maybe because of how, in life, the human that had become the demon had envisioned them. Maybe it was just because it made her feel special. But there was a chaotic, blade like tangle of tiny sharp horns at the crown of her head and down her back, seeming to sprout from her vertebrae like teeth. She was hollowed out, just skin stretched over a skeleton, pulled taut against her pelvic bone and spine until she looked almost insect like. It was almost beautiful in a sick, hellish sort of way. There was no soul in the demon’s mouth, but it hadn’t been long ago that she’d had it. There were still glittery remains of it on her teeth.

 

Dean turned his eyes to Sam again in horror and rage ground his teeth together and leveled his gun at the demon bitch’s face.

 

She laughed; “And what do you think that’s gonna do!”

 

“Dunno… but it’s gonna hurt,” He PUSHED just as his finger tightened on the trigger and felt the crack of the shot run through him—echo between his ribs and Color flooded the room.

 

The bullet BURNED, trailed wisps of white behind it and punched into the woman’s right eye, into the demon’s and blasted out the back of her pointed head.

 

It didn’t kill her, but it did hurt.

 

The demon screamed, clapped her hands over the wound and roared out of the woman’s mouth in a splash of sulfuric demon blood and black smoke.

 

The other demons rushed him as one, abandoning Sam where he hung in a waning cloud of green ligh—

 

Green?

 

Dean pulled the trigger again, smoked out a second demon and turned to stare at the body hanging by its wrists from the ceiling, slowly choking to death on its own brain tissue, nose twisted and torn half off his face, teeth crushed out, skull cracked and dented in irreversibly.

 

Green…

 

Sam wasn’t green, that—

 

Dean’s blood ran cold.

 

That wasn’t Sam.

 

Something hot and thin and sharp sunk deep into Dean’s side and he jerked with the impact, twisted and brought his gun up, pressed it under the demon’s chin and PULLED.

 

It happened in an instant. Soundless but for the ringing in Dean’s ears.

 

The third demon smoked out between gasping bloody teeth and the other three descended. One on each arm forcing him down and the third jerked the hypodermic from his side and waggled it in his face. “Nighty-night, Winchester… See you when you wake up.”

 

And there was a blur… Tan and orange-brown and GOLD.

 

Bright shining GOLD and flickering with metallic flame, enraged and unstoppable, the force of a semi-truck compacted into a twenty-pound weapon of fury. It snarled and roared and appeared with sharp little teeth bared, latched onto ankles and ravaged.

 

The demon laughed, pulled its torn lips back from its ugly teeth and looked at Dean. “This is hilarious!”

 

And he drew back one steel toed boot and kicked—

 

She yelped, high and helpless and hurt and tumbled across the room, collided with a shelving unit stacked with old car parts and disappeared in the collapsing ruin of steel and broken glass.

 

Dean felt the breath catch in his throat and the demon turned, descended on him and pressed a hand flat on Dean’s chest.

 

“Now, let’s see what we can do about—“

 

Dean’s hands lifted, caught the demon by either side of his face and he SMILED.

 

It felt like heat, like sticking his hand into boiling water and not being burned. It felt like something inside him was grasped and wrenched in two. Like a towel torn between savage hands… Like flesh ripped between a hellhound’s teeth.

 

Dean felt momentarily weightless, soundless, endless, something in his chest shoves itself to freedom, tears loose of its confines like some kind of violent birth and there is an explosion of pain in his head. Like an egg in a microwave… it just—just BURSTS.

 

And everything stops—

 

Shudders…

 

**BLAZES!**

 

0-0-0

 

She approached with a smile and Sam’s food balanced on a platter in her hand. “Here you go!” She reaches for the soda and bumps it with her fingertips, topples the glass and it spills. The cup hits Sam’s notebook and upends over his lap. He stands quickly with a startled gasp, ice and cold coke spilling down his legs.

 

“Oh! OH, GOD! I’m so sorry!” Emmaline puts the platter on the table over Sam’s phone and jerks the hand towel out of the loop of her apron makes as if to pat his lap dry, thinks twice and hands him the towel. “I am SO SORRY!”

 

Sam sighs in irritation and shakes his head; “It’s fine, shit happens…”

 

The cook calls out from the back room; “Jesus, Emma!” He comes out with a package of dispenser napkins and starts shoving fistfuls at Sam. “Just—just go take care of those lunch dishes, I got this.”

 

Emmaline’s head sags but she leaves.

 

Craig, or so the name on his shirt dubs him, jerks his chin after her, “Third time this week, you’d think she’d never bussed tables before…” He rubs a hand on the back of his neck, “I’m real sorry about that, mister—“

 

“Angus… Agent Angus,” Maybe it’ll get him free food.

 

“Jesus,” Craig goes about wiping the mess off the table, shifts the tray aside and pockets Sam’s phone without notice; “Don’t worry about the meal, sir… Just—Shit, I’ve got some khakis and a polo in the back if you wanna change. I’m real sorry about this.”

 

Sam accepts the change of clothes, because sitting around in soggy underwear on a vinyl seat is unpleasant beyond measure. The khakis are a little short and the polo’s too big, but they’re dry and that’s what matters.

  
Craig comes out of the back after Sam’s returned from the restroom puts down a new plate of food and a piece of pie that he says is his wife’s famous caramel pear, blue ribbon county fair.

 

Sam doesn’t eat it, sneaks it into a takeaway box and decides to make a peace offering of it to Dean. About five minutes into his chicken sandwich Sam realizes his phone’s missing. It’s not in the soggy pocket of his slacks, not in his briefcase… And the kitchen is strangely quiet.

 

“Hello?”

 

Sam climbs to his feet and peers into the back but nobody’s there, he checks the bathroom for his phone, but it’s not there…

 

He gathers up his things and leaves, feels sweat trickling down the back of his collar and is shocked by the temperature he reads on the old Pepsi thermometer hanging outside the hotel… Is even more so unnerved when he realizes the Impala’s gone. He pushes into the room and calls out, hears nothing in return and goes for the phone, punches in Dean’s number and gets voicemail.

 

It’s the sight of Dean’s medication scattered on the tabletop that does it.  Dean wouldn’t leave his pills just lying around like that. He’s very private, keeps all their medication on lock down and knows how many of what and how much he can get on the street for it if they’re down on cash and pool halls. Dean may not be very good with numbers most of the time, but he knows money.

 

Dean’s computer is open on the bed, has gone into sleep mode but Sam wakes it up with a few clicks and sees the GPS of his phone is turned on and blinking some five miles or more east of his current location.

 

“What the hell?”

 

Sam tries calling one more time and gets nothing.

 

It sets low in his gut, worry and a growing sense of fear. He’d had his phone in the diner had just finished talking to Dean when he’d gone inside;

 

_“I’m just about to head back. Do you want anything to eat?”_

 

The line had buzzed but he hadn’t thought anything of it. There were power lines running above the street, it was normal… right?

 

Dean’s voice had sounded fuzzy, not quite clear; _“Bring me back some pie.”_

_“Of course… I’ll be back in about half an hour, can you pack up and be ready to go?”_

_“Get some chips too.”_

_The line buzzed again and Sam sighed in irritation; “My phone’s acting up, I’ll call you back later.”_

_“Pie, Sam. Don’t forget the pie!”_

 

And the line had gone dead.

 

It clicked… Sam had heard Dean say those things before. They’d had that same conversation the night of the Witnesses and—

 

“Son of a bitch…”

 

Sam steals a car out of the grocery store parking lot. It’s a nineties Buick with the keys in the ignition and cigarette butts crammed into every ash tray and cup holder. The radio doesn’t work and from the sound of it the transmission is just about ready to blow.

 

His heart is racing and a sour sludge has dripped into the back of his throat and refuses to budge no matter how many times he swallows.

 

Five miles takes too long to drive. It feels like fifty, but he sees the Impala from the road, parked behind a little fan of young trees, practically invisible in the fading light.

 

The windows are down and there is a tuft of Sputnik’s fur stuck in the weather strip at the top of the door, like she’d squeezed herself out through the gap, she probably had, she didn’t like it when Dean went somewhere she couldn’t.

 

He could see her paw prints in the mud alongside Dean’s boot prints.

 

Sam pulls his gun and approaches the building with the safety off.

 

Part of the roof has collapsed and the smell of sulfur is strong, overpowering.

 

There is broken glass scattered on the ground around the windows, and the whole place has a charged, unpleasant feeling about it.

 

It’s quiet.

 

Too quiet.

 

Sam finds the body of the waitress with part of her skull blown away and he sweeps the darkness with the beam of his flashlight, tense and thrumming in fear and anger.

 

Demons. He hadn’t even been able to tell.

 

There are two more bodies, one a man with short hair and a goatee in a t-shirt and jeans. He has a bullet through his head from the chin up, part of his forehead is missing. The other is lying along the wall, limp and freshly dead, the blood is only just starting to clot, but the poor guy’s head is bashed in. It takes Sam a minute to realize he’s wearing the suit Emmaline had spilled soda on, it’s even still damp.

 

It makes sense then, everything and Sam pushes himself up, sweeps the walls and floor around him and calls his brother’s name.

 

“Dean? DEAN!”

 

But he gets no answer.

 

Sam sees his boot first, brown amid the black and he shoves his gun into the waistband of his jeans and launches himself forward. Dean’s against the far wall half pinned under metal sheeting and broken two-by-fours.

 

He isn’t moving and his skin has taken on a sallow, paraffin gray color. It’s a weirdly beautiful contrast to the blood caked under his nose and on his cheek. Something artistic like those paintings that hung in the gallery Jess liked to go to every so often.

Sam almost sees his brother in brushstrokes where he’s lying so still and lifeless.

All Sam can think about was how Dean had looked after the hellhounds had torn him open, how his limbs were so loose and his head had hung limp against his arm like a bead on a piece of knotted string. Dean had been so HEAVY without life in him and Sam feared that he would feel that same cooling weight again as he shoved the metal and broken two-by-fours away. He felt nausea roll in his stomach like something slimy and alive. He was too late. Oh, Jesus—he’s too late and Dean is dead!

His hand shook, afraid to touch, too stubborn to pull away and he felt despair rising up his throat like gall, dragging inhuman wailing noises behind it, a chain gang of misery that would inevitably turn him inside out and lay all his tender bleeding bits bare.

Dean’s skin was cool and clammy and Sam couldn’t find a pulse in his wrist—struggled not to scream and pushed two fingers under Dean’s jaw, breath punching out of his chest when he found a pulse weakly—erratically beating there.

Alive, he’s alive… Why isn’t he moving?

“Dean?”

Sam leaned forward and pried apart Dean’s eyelids, peered in curiously, warily— His brother’s pupils were blown wide and the whites of his eyes were splattered with little irritated red veins.

“Dean, can you hear me?”

Not so much as a twitch.

Sam’s hands shook, inched under his collar and followed the curve of his spine from the back of his head to his shoulders. He pushed a hand under Dean’s shirt and traced from shoulders to the waistband of his jeans looking for signs of injury, swelling, unnatural firmness, physical wounds, or unusual softness where there shouldn’t be. His stomach felt normal when Sam pressed on it, firm and muscled under a thin layer of softness. Dean has always been thicker around the middle, too many greasy bacon cheese burgers and a genetic disposition more in common to their mother, an inclination toward finer features and a deceptive softness.

He seems entirely uninjured save bruises blossoming on his arms and perhaps a cracked rib, but he won’t respond when Sam says his name. Not even when he fits an arm under his shoulders and levers him up, pulls him to his chest and tries to chafe warmth back into his skin.

Something is wrong, something has happened and Sam knows what it is, he just doesn’t want to admit it. There is a bruise shaped like a hand on Dean’s chest, just below a little pink dot of tissue that looks almost like a cigarette burn. The sander, Sam remembers now. Dean had said the sander had a short in it.

The bruise is faded, almost like it’s healed in the middle and dark purple black at the edges. It’s frightening to look at. Even more so when he pries Dean’s eyes open again and notices the thin green circle of his iris looks more dull than it had before, almost gray-green instead of what he’d become used to. It—it was like someone had taken out the very light from his brother’s eyes. The spark from his—

Fuck… Oh, Jesus Christ!

Sam pulls him closer, shrugs out of his coat as quickly as he can and wraps Dean in it. Shifts, grunts and gets into a squatting position then pulls Dean up against his chest, swings his legs over his arm and holds on tightly. 

Dean is solid muscle, he’s heavy very heavy but Sam can’t feel it, not at the moment, he has to get Dean out of here, has to get him someplace safe because whatever the Demons have done to him is serious—more so than Sam really has the capacity to understand at the moment. All he knows is that Dean had told him, had let something slip about the grace in his chest, that if Demons got hold of it they could deal serious damage to not only humanity but angels as well. He’s halfway to the door when he sees it, a rumpled little form amid a pile of garbage. Sad dark eyes watching his every move.

Sam stops and stares in shock, had known Dean would have had the dog with him but hadn’t fully grasped what that would mean. Now he’s looking at her, lying on her side pinned under an overturned shelving unit, big brown eyes shining as if with tears.

She whines, a single soft whimper and her tail thumps once.

“Sputnik,” Sam says her name loudly, hoping she can wiggle out on her own. Her front paws twitch, scratch at the floor but she can’t move. Whines helplessly in confusion and fear.

Urgency burns in Sam’s veins like liquid fire and he meets the dog’s eyes and speaks in a firm calm voice; “Stay!” He approaches quickly, props Dean against the wall and heaves the shelf up, watches as the dog wriggles and writhes and drags herself free. She staggers a few feet and collapses with her head on Dean’s shin panting and whining and shivering. There is blood on her vest and sweater and Sam can see it frothed on her tongue as she works for breath.

She’s small, but she’s bulked up in the months she’s been with them and Sam can’t carry her and Dean at the same time, feels like the king of all bastards when he heaves his brother up into his arms again and whistles to get her up.

She limps, staggers and whines occasionally, stops and lays down a few times, but when Sam calls to her, pitches his voice high and feigns excitement she wags her tail weakly and forces herself up again.

Sam gets Dean and the dog into the car, slides behind the wheel and pulls him over in the seat, holds him close with his fingers tangled in Dean’s hair and two fingers on his neck counting the erratic beats of his heart. Sputnik lies panting on her side in the floorboard eyes dim and glassy and there is nothing but the sound of their breath, mingled and hectic and the words Sam shouts to the heavens;

_Castiel—Please—PLEASE! They got Dean! The Demons got Dean!_

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0


	25. Revenge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one chapter tonight, probably another saturday.
> 
> Thanks again to Jessi for pointing out things I needed to tweak before posting *waves enthusiastically*

0-0-0

 

Bobby drops everything. Literally. He’d been after something nasty in northern Iowa but he hadn’t even said the name of the thing before he’d hissed in a breath at Sam’s plea and said he was on his way.

 

Sam doesn’t have options. He can’t take Dean to the hospital, it’s too open, to easily penetrated by demons or any number of other things that could come looking for them. The hotel room is a ‘no’ he can’t even risk going back to get their things at this point. They booked for the whole week, he has four days, it shouldn’t be a problem. Dean will be OK by then. He has to be. End of story.

 

Sam drives around for a long time, stays to side streets with no dusktildawn lamps burning yellow orange above their heads. No chance of being caught on security cameras. Dean starts seizing at about midnight, hard spasms and jerks of his limbs and a dull empty noise in his throat as he fights for breath. Sputnik whines and yaps at him in pain but after a while goes quiet and lies there panting.

 

The fit ends, they always do, but thirty minutes later he has another one and another, building in intensity until Sam winds up parked on the side of the road sitting on the grass with Dean’s head in the protective cradle of his hands chanting that it’s going to be OK, it’s just going to be fine, relax. It’s OK. Sam doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince because this is BAD, this is very bad. He may have read what to do in the pamphlet the doctors had given Dean after his release months ago, but that doesn’t prepare him for facing it, for sitting there on his heels watching Dean convulse and knowing there isn’t a damned thing he can do until it stops.

 

That’s where Bobby finds him, sitting on the side of the highway holding Dean to him just like he had that night only a year and three days before.

 

Dean’s lips are blue and his limbs are stiff, Bobby thinks the worst but Sam shakes his head, doesn’t say anything, just eases his brother down onto the ground again when the tension goes out of his body and tilts his head so he can breathe, so if he’s sick he won’t drown in it.

 

Bobby crouches beside him, peers into the car and sees Sputnik lying there barely moving and squeezes Sam’s shoulders, asks in a low voice how many this makes and don’t you think we should take him to the emergency room?

 

Sam shakes, just shakes and shakes along with his brother and doesn’t say anything until it’s over. He exhales, deflates a little, shrinks down to a size much too small for his stature and Bobby thinks Sam can’t be any more than some lost little kid in that moment, scared and hurt and too young for the age in his eyes.

 

“They could come after him again, I can’t risk it… They did something. They tried to take his grace and I don’t know if they got it or not—I don’t know if he can survive without it if they did, or if they’ll come back and try again.”

 

“Sam, he could be dying—“

 

Sam knocks his hands away and combs his fingers through Dean’s matted hair, shakes a little more and lets the saltwater drip off his cheeks. “No… no hospitals.”

 

Bobby rocks back onto his heels and swipes his cap from his head, twists it between his fingers and tries not to watch, tries not to let his good sense slip watching Dean… just WATCHING it. “Okay,” He breathes, puts his hat back on his head, “But he can’t stay here.”

 

Hunters, the social ones at least, share certain secrets with one another. Safe houses are few and far between and more often than not they’re burned to the ground by the exact people who need them the most, but abandoned homes in the forgotten corners of the United States all share the same potential to become the next in a long line of sanctuaries for those of the ilk.

 

Bobby knows of two in the state, one of them he’s pretty sure got bulldozed a while back, but the other has the highest possibility of still being sturdy enough to serve its purpose. They head for that one.

 

It’s a lonely looking shotgun style shack set off a disused forestry road, gray and swayed dangerously in the rafters. It has the look of something just barely holding back from collapsing in on itself. Teenagers desperate for a place to drink and party and fuck would think it too dangerous to enter and look for better venues, hunters would declare it sound, slap down salt lines and make a home for themselves.

 

There’s a bed in the rear of the house, sagging and rusted with a mouse eaten mattress stained with things that in the best of circumstances would only be blood, but Bobby throws a tarp over it and a couple emergency blankets, scrawls sigils on the walls, lays down salt in a continuous line around the room and calls Sam in with a wave of his flashlight. Then goes out to get the dog, bundles her shivering little body to his chest and carries her in, spreads her out on the wobbly kitchen table and takes a pair of scissors to her vest and sweater, tries to keep her calm and still while his blunt hard fingers travel over her furry little body and find the source of the blood. She barely moves, whines in pain but doesn’t snap at him as he disinfects and stitches it up, wraps her in bandages and shrugs out of his flannel to keep her warm while he and Sam work to clean up the elder Winchester.

 

Bobby feels oddly like he’s taking part in some medieval ritual. He and Sam don’t speak. Sam heats water on the butane stove and Bobby works Dean’s clothes off, cuts when he has to and hums low in the back of his throat when Dean’s eyes open unexpectedly and roll around in his head, mouth open in a silent scream, back arched and hands fisted against his chest. Whatever it is, convulsion or attempt to break for consciousness, Bobby doesn’t know. It isn’t long though, until Dean’s limp and shivering weakly again, moisture dripping continuously between his lids.

 

Bobby remembers hearing his mother talk when he was very young, about his great grandmother’s death. How she had watched through a crack in the door as her mother, aunt and grandmother had washed the elderly woman’s body  where it lie stiffened by arthritis and cooling, had rubbed sweet talcum powder into her skin, curled her hair and rubbed rouge into her cheeks in preparation for her funeral. They hadn’t been able to afford a proper one, just a pine box and a linen cover for the coffin. He remembered hearing his mother speak of how the women had recited hymns and verses and laid silver dollars on her eyelids, then bound her hands together with green ribbon around a bunch of Damascus roses that grew out behind the shed.

 

The way his mother had described it had seemed surreal, almost beautiful, macabre considering the times now, but normal then, sacred.

 

Bobby remembered helping Sam wash the blood from Dean’s body after the hellhounds had torn him apart. He remembered the smell and the visceral, ugly quality of death to someone so young and so important, someone so vital to Bobby’s existence. It hadn’t felt sacred then, it had felt sick and desperate, some pathetic denial of a life cut too short. Like it made a difference to the worms and flies if the body was clean or not.

 

Now, his hands shook, feeling the waning life in Dean’s skin and limbs so fragile and hurt. He didn’t begrudge Sam his tears in that moment, if he wanted to be honest, which he rarely was concerning these things, he would admit to shedding a few himself. As it was he kept his teeth grit and worked a clean shirt over Dean’s head and arms and clean underwear up his legs. They wrapped him in both sleeping bags and Sam found packages of valerian root in his bag. He made tea, added more honey and sugar than was strictly necessary and propped Dean against his chest, fed it to him spoonful by spoonful, rubbing fingertips up and down the length of Dean’s throat to get him to swallow it. Bracketed his brother’s body by bunching the blankets like baby bumpers around him so he couldn’t roll away and cause himself harm. Then he took up a spot leaning against the foot of the bed watching the door, one hand on Sputnik’s head, scratching comfortingly behind her ear, propped his arm across his knees, gun at the ready… and waited.

 

It was really all they could do.  Wait and Pray and hope against hope that Castiel or God or someone answered them.

 

Dawn came slowly. A gray creeping thing that slithered through the trees and branches and slashedHACKED a place for itself in the stillness with a cacophony of birdsong and the glow of their breath puffing silver in the air before them.

 

Dean didn’t move, didn’t wake, didn’t seem to live aside from the continued beat of his heart and sips of breath pulled between his ravaged lips. He hadn’t had another Bad One since the one on the side of the road when Bobby had found them. Maybe it was over… maybe it would be OK.

 

Bobby started up the stove again, boiled water and made coffee, blew warmth into his aching hands and chafed it back into his limbs, rubbed the cold from his nose and the crests of his cheeks.

 

Sam wouldn’t drink the coffee. Wouldn’t eat the oatmeal. Wouldn’t leave Dean’s side even to take the dog out to do her business in the bushes. He sat right there and watched Dean breathe. Watched the minute shifts in his expression, slack and lifeless to scrunched and agonized. The soft trembling in his limbs that sometimes wracked up to onetwothree quick hard convulsive jerks and tapered off again. Sam had a constant running dialogue in his head. Pleas and demands, Castiel’s name in question and condemnation. Behind this were darker thoughts. Regret and fears like poison, seeping deeper and deeper into his chest until sometime after three that afternoon he bowed his head, hands tangled in his hair, teeth ground together so tightly they popped and the praying ground to a halt.

 

Bobby had found a chair in one of the other rooms and dragged it in, had taken up residence against the wall and was cleaning his shotgun. He looked up when Sam moved, called his name, but the younger Winchester couldn’t hear him, climbed to his feet and moved to the bed, touched Dean’s neck and peeled the blankets back, pulled his shirt up and stared at the mark on his chest, the contrast between the amulet and his skin. Brass and pallor. Gray and gold… That hideous bruise that looked somehow worse now than it had the night before

 

Sam breathed in and out, tucked the blankets back around Dean and left. Bobby followed him as far as the front porch and dared go no further; “What’re you doin’?”

 

“I have to know what they did it to him. I have to find a way to fix this.”

 

“I don’t know if we _can_ fix it. That was BAD. I read the books just the same as you. He NEEDS a doctor.”

 

Sam clenches his teeth. “They’re still out there. I’m not putting him in danger like that. There couldn’t have been any more than four of them left or they would have just killed him. If they took the grace omens would have started popping up by now, if they didn’t get it odds are they’re looking for him, which means I have to find them first.”

 

Bobby’s shoulders sag; “You can’t do this alone—“

 

“I have to… I left him, Bobby. This is my fault—“ His voice catches in his throat and he has to swallow it down to keep from screaming; “If I find anything, any kind of omen I’ll call you and you can take him right to the emergency room… They won’t care enough to come after him if they’ve got the grace and he’ll be safe. If I don’t find anything, I’ll call you when I’ve finished with the demons and you can take him to the emergency room—“

 

“Sam—“

 

“No,” His voice comes out deep, authoritative, “Not until its safe… I can’t lose him. I won’t.”

 

Bobby stares at him, sees something a little dark in Sam’s eyes; “You could be losing him right now! We don’t know what’s going on inside him. He coulda’ had an aneurism or a stroke—His brain coulda’ been liquefied, we don’t KNOW.”

 

Sam shakes his head; “No… The angels need him for something, they wouldn’t let him die like this, Castiel wouldn’t let him die like this—“

 

Bobby scoffed; “From what I remember, you said Castiel got his reset button punched. We can’t trust that he’d stop this… We can’t rely on them to save him. It’s the Apocalypse. End of the world… Do you really think Angels are gonna give two shits if Dean Winchester dies at this point?”

 

Sam shook his head, clenched his fists and stepped closer, spoke low in his throat; “They want him for something, something BIG… Why else would they have pulled him out of Hell? He—he has to end this, Bobby and he can’t do that if he’s dead. They won’t let him die… But the demons will if they’ve got that grace. They’ll kill EVERYTHING, they’ll destroy EVERYTHING.”

 

“And how do you expect to get it back if they did take it?”

 

Sam swallows, breathes in and clenches his teeth; “I’ll have help.”

 

Bobby’s nose wrinkled up; “From who? The Easter Bunny?”

 

Sam doesn’t answer him. He inhales deeply and turns toward the car.

 

“Sam—Sam you best not be doin’ what I think you’re doin’…”

 

“Just go back inside, Bobby.”

 

“Boy if you’re thinkin’ about dealin—“

 

“I’m not,” He pauses and looks up at the older man earnestly; “I won’t do that to him. I won’t do that to you.”  

 

“Why don’t I believe you?”

 

Sam inhales and lets it out slowly, “I won’t.”

 

They stare at one another for a long moment, then Bobby glances away with a shake of his head and Sam climbs behind the wheel of the Impala, turns in the small clearing in front of the cabin and drives away. He sees Bobby in the rearview mirror rubbing his face tiredly before he turns and retreats back inside.

He calls Ruby. She answers on the third ring, there is music in the background, the sound of wind tearing through car windows;

 

“Sam.”

 

“They got him.”

 

“They? What do you mean, ‘they’, got who?”

 

“Dean was attacked… He’s unconscious and—“

 

“Wait a minute, you mean THEY? Like, other demons? Jesus SHIT,” Car tires scream and a moment later the music stops and her voice becomes urgent; “Did they get it? Did they take it from him?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“What do you mean—Does he give off EMF? Grace is like—like THE STUFF, Sam. It makes cameras go haywire, it’ll boost your cell signal—It’s lightning in a fucking bottle and you don’t know if it’s there?”

 

“He had about six seizures in a row and he won’t wake up. There’s this big mark on his chest and he—“ Sam punches the steering wheel; “I don’t KNOW, OK! I need help!”

 

“If they took it you can kiss our chances of stopping Lilith goodbye! We don’t have enough time to find something else! Jesus FUCK, Sam how did they get him!”

 

He yells it, slaps wetness from his face, angry and humiliated and seething beneath his skin. “I left him alone! One of them took my phone and tricked him and he—It’s my fault! It’s MY FAULT!”

 

Ruby mutters fuck under her breath and the line crackles with her barely contained energy. “Where are you?”

 

He tells her the name of the nearest town.

 

“Okay, where’s Dean?”

 

“Safe… I can’t tell you, the line may not be secure.”

 

She scoffs, is quiet a moment and sighs; “Okay… He’s not dead is he?”

 

“No… Someone’s with him.”

 

“Okay… he’s an asshole, but I know how much he means to you…” She curses again, “Its gonna take me a while to get there unless I dump coma girl. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Get a hotel room and I’ll call you when I’m in town.”

 

He nods, doesn’t say anything.

 

“If they have the grace we’re screwed, Sam. May as well kick back and fuck like bunnies until the cage pops if that’s the case.”

 

“No.”

 

“No?”

 

“No, if they’ve got it, we take it back.”

 

She sighs, “Sam, be realistic—“

 

“If they have it, I’m going to get it back.”

 

“And how exactly do you expect to do that? I can’t touch it. I touch grace I go _poof_ remember?”

 

He exhales and grinds his teeth.

 

“What about the angel?”

 

“Castiel’s been—“

 

“No… Anna. What about Anna?”

 

“Anna,” He feels a bubble of hope in his chest.

 

“If she can’t get it back I don’t think anybody can.”

 

He shook his head; “What if she won’t help us?”

 

“It’s worth a shot, yanno… Unless you _want_ to fuck like bunnies until the cage pops. Which, wouldn’t be a bad way to go I guess.”

 

He shakes his head; “I’ll give it a try.”

 

“Okay. I’ll call you when I get into town,” And she hangs up without a goodbye.

 

Sam drives for a long while more, long enough that he feels safe pulling over and climbing out of the car. He leans against the fender, stares out over the road, small leaves growing on the trees, tender and still pink green in some places and calls out; “Anna? Anna, I-I need your help.”

 

She arrives with a noise like a whirlwind and stands off to his left with her arms crossed. “I’m very popular apparently. First Castiel, now you?”

 

“Castiel? He called you?”

 

Her eyes narrow; “Is that a surprise?”

 

Sam’s jaw clenched; “He graduated Bible Camp. Got his purity ring and everything.”

 

She hesitates, her expression troubled but doesn’t say anything.

 

Sam rubs his nose, feels a static burn in his sinuses and a tightening in his throat; “I called for him… Told him what’d happened and he didn’t show.”

 

She met his eyes and ducked her chin toward her chest; “What happened.”

 

He told her. Plain and simple, four words. “The demons got Dean.”

 

“Do they still have him?”

 

Sam shook his head, “I found him in an old service station about thirty miles from here or more, unconscious and pinned under part of the roof… He had a grand mal on the side of the road and I couldn’t—“

 

She steps forward and touches his arm, waits until he’s rubbed the wetness from his eyes and speaks low, comforting, her voice seeming to vibrate into his chest and slow the beat of his heart to a manageable level.

 

Sam spoke more to the ground than her and his voice came out strained and tight; “I don’t know what to do. Is he going to be OK without it? How do I get it back?”

 

Anna ducks her head to meet his eyes; “If the demons have grace they can make weapons from it, they can warp and poison it and do horrible, horrible things to people’s souls as well as angels. We have to find it and get it back.”

 

“What about Dean? Is he—will he survive without it?”

 

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of a human possessing grace before… Normally the only way it happens is with vessels and it wears off quickly without the person becoming aware it’s even there, like a rub-on-tattoo. But this was a part of him… He could be fine—or he couldn’t. I have no idea.”

 

“If we find it, can you put it back?”

 

She looks at him for a moment with her lips parted and her brows tilted up just a fraction, but she speaks earnestly; “Yes.”

 

Sam isn’t sure if he believes her or not, but she’s the only hope he has. “Where do we start?”

 

“Take me to the service station where you found him. We’ll go from there.”

 

0-0-0

 

Castiel remembered violence. Fear and being wrenched from his vessel, struggling and BURNING the hands that gripped him. He remembers pain and VOICES pounding in his head, breaking down what resistance he had and showing him the darkness beneath it. The ugliness beneath his desires.

**_The human has poisoned you. You must resist it. Millions have come before him. He is not special._ **

_But he is the Righteous Man!_

**_There are hundreds more like him  that could have been the one, Castiel. Just like the seals. It was only a matter of chance that he was the one to do it. Nothing more. He is flesh and blood, his mind could never fully grasp what you are. He does not accept you, does not value you. You, an Angel of the Lord on High. You were the Leader of a Garrison in God’s Almighty Army! And he calls to you when he is confused and frightened. He does not understand. He will use you, hurt you and when you are no longer useful to his purpose he will discard you just as he has done the women of his kind since he was young. He appreciates NOTHING Castiel. He is sinful and base and despicable and he is pulling you down with him! He has defied God’s orders. GOD! Our Father! He has defied him! Spat in his face and denied his purpose and you, by helping him, have done the same! Lucifer was cast down for less, Castiel. Do you understand this? Can you understand it? Or has that human filth sullied your mind so irreversibly? You have Darkened, Castiel… You are no longer Pure, do you understand the severity of this? That Human has caused this! HE has Darkened you!_ **

Over and over and over again a cadence of blows and hands Holding. BURNING, PULLING and TAKING. Wings slapping, hands tearing, words CHEWING deeper and deeper into his core. Cutting, gnawing, breaking, hacking, burning.

Filth, they said. Despicable. Horrid. Sinful. Blasphemy. Unworthy.

**_And in aiding him you have accepted his transgressions as your own!_ **

He bowed his head, defeated, cried pardon and let them BURN at the darkening of him as if it were infection.

**Prove yourself,** the Archangels said **. And we shall embrace you, shall purge this Darkness from you and reform you whole and unscarred.**

He folds his wings submissively, turns his palms in acceptance and displays the crown of his head to their mercy.

The tension goes out of Heaven and all is calm again, the Archangels retreat to their haven and Zechariah appears, holds himself broad and tall with his palms turned and wings held mantled in a dominating configuration. He speaks and lets his voice be FELT, gives Castiel his orders and leaves when the sign of acceptance is received.

Castiel does not get up for a long while. He kneels there and feels the BURN of wounds unhealed, hears the echo of VOICES in his head. Condemnation and Truths he was too poisoned to understand.

A few seraphs comment about him, their voices carrying through the halls and corridors.

**Look at that! He’s so ugly! Traitorous, took orders from HUMANS! Can you see it? That Crack? How can he still exist like that?**

Angels, most particularly Seraphs, are terribly gossipy. When in groups they often chatter ceaselessly. The buildup of energy often causes a dull ringing in the ears of humans near them. Psychics sensitive enough to catch snippets of conversation often call it white noise, when in fact it is only the inane conversation of the host.

Perhaps this is why Seraphs are usually isolated and very rarely allowed in groups of more than three. They could literally chat one’s ear off.

Castiel couldn’t see them, but he could hear their voices, sense their presence, wavering and indistinct. He waited until they had finished and turned away before he moved, pulled his wings in tight and stood.

Dean prayed to him, asked where the hell he was. Sam did the same. He tried to return to his vessel, but Jimmy refused him, more than once.

So he waited. He followed, far enough away that Dean couldn’t sense him, far enough away that he could barely sense Dean.

He couldn’t care. He didn’t know how, he had to remember that. But it still burned strangely in his core. Something he couldn’t name, sealed off and hidden.

Claire said yes. Even if she was young, she gave her consent. He would not make the same mistake twice, she would remain suppressed and unknowing of anything that occurred.

But then something happened. Jimmy, lying there dying, had looked up into the face of his daughter and reached out to the angel inside her. “Let her go…”

Perhaps if he had been able to see with more than his borrowed human eyes, Castiel would have felt something different. As it was, he felt only a flare of emotion from the dying man. Desperation and fear and love… so much LOVE. Resignation as he reached for his daughter’s hand and held it, a sad fruitless desire to break through to the child.

Something burned in Castiel’s core, that scar where he had torn out part of himself and given it to Dean Winchester…  It—it ACHED.

It made no sense… Claire was just as capable of being a vessel as her father. What difference would it make?

Castiel stared down at the man, watched him weep and felt the heart in his borrowed chest beating a hard fast rhythm.

What was to stop Claire from revoking her invitation? What was to stop her, tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, from struggling and denying him?

Jimmy’s face crumbled and he tangled his fingers in the sleeve of Claire’s sweater, begging with the blue of his eyes and the burning fierceness of his soul.

“Please… Take me. Take me.”

It was a new sensation, familiar, but Castiel couldn’t remember where he’d felt it before.

_Warmth. Belonging… protective need to ensure her safety. Fear, desperation._

**_Don’t hurt my little girl. Please… PLEASE._ **

Maybe that was why he did it, maybe it was for other reasons, reasons he shouldn’t have, reasons that for the moment escaped him. It just… it felt RIGHT.

He was an angel of the Lord, he was just and the Plan was just because it came from Heaven. Castiel released the girl and claimed Jimmy once more. Paused when he’d settled onto his feet and stared at her, stared where her mother had pulled her small body to her chest. Counted their tears like galaxies and turned away. He did what he’d been instructed to do. Said what he had been told to say, retreated because it was what was expected of him and when Dean caught his hand, a familiar, loose grip on his fingers, Castiel spoke, the words burned onto his tongue—

And he HURT inside. HURT in ways that had nothing to do with the wounds slowly healing.

He could still FEEL that wave of LOVE Jimmy had felt for his daughter, even now, after he had silenced the man, tucked him close and deep for safe keeping, in silent dreamlessness. Castiel wondered at the fact that Jimmy hadn’t even hesitated to trade places with her. Even now he was silent, unresisting. It… It felt WRONG somehow. Even as spiteful as Jimmy had been toward Dean and Sam, he had so willingly and unflinchingly sacrificed himself for his daughter.

He pushed on, told himself it was senseless human sentiment and meant absolutely nothing, but part of him still clung to the issue. Part of him still fought in the rear of his mind.

Why?

Why would he have given up his own life for hers?

0-0-0

Sam waits by the car while Anna literally disappears from the front seat and into the service station. The police have come and gone, left the place wreathed in yellow caution tape with plastic sticky seals over the doors and windows. She’s in there a total of three minutes before there is a bright blaze of light from inside. Sam has his gun drawn and is climbing out of the car when she reappears in the passenger seat.

Sam waits until the building is a speck in the rear view mirror before he speaks; “What’d you find?”

“Demon ash.”

Sam’s nose wrinkles; “Demon ash?”

She nods; “It’s what’s left when you burn one… It’s usually contained in a vessel… I had to blast it.”

“Blast it, why?”

“It’s like a bloody glove, Sam. Everyone who stepped in it, or handled it has that demon’s scent on them. And it’s not a scent you can wash off. You’re lucky you didn’t step in it going in to get Dean out. The others would have been able to find you if you had… Dean isn’t strong enough to completely obliterate a demon. He can break them down, can burn them. But that doesn’t mean they’re dead. It was waiting for the others to come back to help it reform.”

“And the people who came into contact with the ash?”

“They’ll be fine now… If I hadn’t finished the job it would have Obsessed them.”

Sam glances at her. “Obsessed?”

“Yes. There’s a difference between Obsession and Possession. You’ve encountered Possession before. Demonic Obsession is harder to spot… It’s where a demon marks a person, marks a soul. Most people confuse it with schizophrenia, OCD, or a number of other mental illnesses because of the symptoms… Other times, the demon can give the person abilities… Like Azazel did to you.”

Sam blinked, shocked; “Wait, you’re saying I was Obsessed? That’s what it was?”

“Essentially, yes. I’ve never heard of a demon doing what Azazel did with those he Obsessed, but yes. That’s what happened.”

Sam shifted back in his seat a little. He’d never had a name for it before. Just The Thing that had happened to him as a baby. It was weirdly nice to actually, finally have a name for it. “So, demon ash and demon blood can do the same thing?”

“Blood is more powerful and one-hundred-percent effective. Ash is unwieldy. It’s hard to tell when or if it will work… Ash can be ‘cleansed’, blood can’t. Once blood’s in there, it’s in there for good. ”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t go away. It keeps building up over time. Like water wearing away stone. Eventually, it’ll eat it away to nothing and there will be a sea where there was once an island.”

Sam swallows, “Dean said only demons souls are black… He said mine was—“

“It has more than just color behind it. That’s just how his brain translates the information… But yes. You are.”

“Is there any way to reverse it?”

“If there is, I don’t know about it.”

Sam exhales, shrinks in on himself; “And if you don’t know about it, it probably doesn’t exist.”

Anna is quiet for a few seconds, then turns to look at him; “You still crave it… The demon blood.”

He doesn’t look at her but his hands tighten on the wheel. “All the damned time,” He bit his lip, flexed his fingers; “I still have some that she gave me… Mixed it with scotch so it wouldn’t clot up—Sometimes I just, I want it so bad it hurts.”

“You know you can’t, right? If you—“

“I know… that’s why we have to find Dean’s grace and get it back to him.”

Anna’s eyes narrow but she chooses to say nothing further about it. “The demons who survived the attack are ten miles further in the back room of bar called Jerry’s... If I go in there they’ll know and they’ll smoke out. They won’t if you go in alone…” She pauses, opens the glove compartment and fishes around under the old cell phones stray bullets and crumpled kleanex and finds a sharpie, pulls Sam’s hand carefully off the wheel and hunches over his palm.

Sam has the vague notion that she’s about to give him her phone number, but instead she scrawls a complex looking symbol, caps the marker then holds his hand between bother her own, inhales and BREATHES across his palm.

“What are—“ The words die in his throat and his teeth clamp together on a short sharp cry of pain as the ink on his skin GLOWS like flame.

“It’s temporary… If they see it, they’ll be hypnotized for about forty-five seconds… The more powerful they are the faster it wears off.”

“Hypnotized?”

“It’s like a deer in the headlights. They freeze.”

Sam shakes his hand out and stares at it. “What the hell is it?”

“My name…” She shrugs one shoulder and bobs her head to the side a little; “And a little something extra… It’s Enochian. Don’t bother trying to memorize it, you can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I won’t let you.”

He exhales and nods, but when he turns to thank her she’s gone.

0-0-0

Bobby has cleaned all his guns, has loaded, unloaded and reloaded them. He’s checked the dog’s bandages and helped her outside to do her business then brought her back in and fed her canned chicken he’d mashed up in some instant potatoes. She’d eaten some of it, but laid her head down again too soon, panting from the pain and exertion. But the whole time she didn’t take her eyes off Dean, like she wanted to jump onto the bed with him and curl up behind his knees like Bobby had noticed she often did.

 

Dean hasn’t moved much. He twitches gently every so often, grunts and shudders and his eyes will rove around beneath their lids, but he hasn’t woken. Even when Bobby got close, caught his prickly face between his hands and said his name loudly, smacked at his cheeks and lifted each eye open in turn to check the reaction of his pupils, make sure the kid hadn’t stroked out and he wasn’t lying there dying slowly with his brain turned to jelly.

 

His pupils were pinpricks and they stayed that way even if Bobby shaded them with his cupped palm. Dean’s only reaction was to whine and go tense all over when this happened, dig his nails into the blankets and grind his teeth.

 

Bobby’s gone out to his car twice, once to get a book on Angels he’d traded a bottle of jack for, he’s not sure it was worth it, but it’ll give him something to do. And the second time for the Alice pack he kept in the back seat with a little bit of a Hunter’s Survival Kit in it, as well as a skein of olive drab and his size sevens. He returns to his chair, glances at Sputnik where she’s lying with her head propped on the edge of her cushion staring at Dean, decided sixty should be enough and sat to work.

 

Maybe it was the clicking, he’d heard of sounds causing it. Maybe it was entirely unrelated, but when it happened Bobby felt it like rising static in the hair on his arms. Paused and stared, watched each one rise in its follicle and felt the barometric pressure in the room shift.

 

On the bed Dean’s back arches suddenly and he seems to almost levitate, all his limbs and joints pulled absolutely taut.

 

Bobby curses loudly and throws his knitting down. Lunges across the space and catches Dean’s shirt just as he was about to topple off the bed.

 

Sputnik yips helplessly and struggles to her feet.

 

And in Dean’s head everything stops—

 

Shudders…

 

** BLAZES! **

 

Dean’s hands are clasped to the demon’s head and he is suddenly inundated, DROWNING. Images rush in like a dam collapsing. A flood of sensory input. Fear and pain and anger and sadness. Desperation and a sense of wrongness—Faces.

 

The demon’s eyes widen, flash to black and seem to glow from within. Smoke pours out of its nostrils and mouth and a noise—its true voice rises like the rumble of a bomb blast. A single long note of agony and it arches up, back and OUT of the man it was possessing, clawed hands to its face.

 

Dean has never seen anything more than smoke when a demon exits its host. This—this is terrifying.

 

The demon’s face is burned, smoldering with flame the color of absinthe. It’s eating deep into its core and the other demons stare in shock as it drops to its knees wailing, screaming, the ectoplasm it appears as to normal humans BURNING into black sulfuric ash that rains down from the ceiling like poison snow.

 

The demon writhes and screams and curls into a ball shuddering and burning and goes quiet, its body flaring suddenly in a flash of green fire, then it is gone.

 

Dean stares for a grand total of two seconds and something POPS, a great torrent of blood gushing from his nose, his vision brightening and brightening until there was only WHITE and a pressure in his chest like a heart attack.

 

He could taste blood and demon ash and salt and—

 

And he’s in Bobby’s house. He’s ten. Bobby’s wearing a stupid stained apron. He’s frying bacon and Sam’s curled up asleep in Bobby’s chair in the den wearing an oversized lumpy sweater with a giant run in the front of it where whoever had made it had dropped a stitch about halfway up the front. It’s snowing outside, no school and Charlie Brown’s Christmas is on TV.

 

Bobby’s talking to him, saying something about demons in winter and the virtues of the department of highways laying down so much salt on the roads. Dean knows this, he remembers it. But he doesn’t remember the man standing in the corner. At least Dean thinks it’s a man, it’s the shape of a man anyway, but something burns under his skin that says he ISN’T.

 

The bacon Bobby’s frying pops and sends a spatter of grease flying into the older man’s face and he curses violently, steps back and uses the tail end of his apron to wipe it away. Then he steps forward again and seeks his revenge with the sharp end of a fork. 

 

The man in the corner stares, drips color onto the floor like he’s a melting candle and when he opens his mouth it’s like he opens a pit to hell. There is FIRE in him, blazing and spewing ash and smoke and his eyes roll up to the whites and BURN—

 

The man speaks but all Dean can hear of what he’s saying is a noise like a million voices screaming in agony. The image warps—distorts and tears itself apart like film melting on the reel and a monster bursts out of the man’s mouth, peels him back like a chrysalis, shreds the very house with its many claws and teeth and the very fact of its presence as it tears itself to freedom. Tears everything down like photos eaten by flame. There is darkness behind everything and monstrous shapes with too many arms. Knives and blood and chewing gnawing creatures of TEETH and HORROR—there is PAIN. Such unimaginable **_PAIN!_**

 

He’s torn and brutalized and shredded and made new only to repeat the process and he doesn’t understand, there is just sudden agony without context or purpose and Dean screams, blood bubbling up in his throat, claws tearing away his face and shoving between his teeth in search of the sound, cracking his head open like an egg to scratch and slice through everything inside him. Pull out memories like internal organs and hang them up in this diabolical dark room to process and develop into screams and agonies of their own.

 

Dean can’t breathe, can’t think. Is lost in the rush of it all. Hands in the darkness, light and burning. A strange face thin and BRIGHTBURNINGPURE. Four arms and—and— and a voice like the echo of the earth’s very heartbeat. Low and timeless—his body wreathed in crucible fire and SHINING, like the core of the sun. Nothing but brightness so white it can no longer be called white—

 

He feels himself yanked free—dangling like a torn scrap of meat between titanic fingers, carried up-upupup and away. The PUSH IN of the darkness and Dean feels himself drawn in close. Sheltered…

 

**Dean Winchester is _Saved!_**

 

There is brightness, a strange white room and a face with glowing green eyes and a shocked expression. Dean is screaming again. _No—NO! **NO!**_

 

And then he is swallowed by the darkness. There is nothing else.

 

0-0-0

 

Sputnik is barking, has pushed herself up and is standing beside the bed now BARKING urgently. Bobby is on the bed on his knees, has stripped the blankets back and has one hand on Dean’s chest, to keep him from thrashing into the floor, the other between his head and the iron bars of the bedstead.

 

It’s not like the others, Dean’s body is tense, arched up and back, arms folded to his chest fingers flexing rapidly. His eyes are rolled up until only a sliver of green is visible under fluttering lids and the noise—Dear CHRIST the noise. Wet and gagging and fighting for breath pulled high and tight on a scream.

 

Bobby can hear himself talking, soft low words spoken with his chin bowed to his chest; “Easy, son. You’re alright. Everything’s gonna be fine,” Because the books and websites and doctors he’d talked to had said that’s what you were supposed to do. And as much as he didn’t want to get hit, Bobby couldn’t leave, couldn’t let the kid just—he couldn’t leave him alone even just on the bed because he could hurt himself.

 

Part of him still wanted to put his belt between Dean’s teeth to keep him from chewing his tongue up, but the doctors had said no. So he did what he could and kept count in his head.

 

It doesn’t last as long as the others, a minute, two—and Dean’s body goes lax, panting, shivering and covered in sweat. Bobby cleans him up as best he can and draws one of the sleeping bags back over him, pulls his chair over to the bed and pushes his fingers through Dean’s hair a few times compulsively, finds his pulse beating in his wrist and counts out the rhythm. Waits until it’s calmed down to a slow waltz before he pulls away. Scratches his nails on the legs of his jeans and curses anyone who may be listening.

 

_You fix this… Wherever you are. Whatever you did, you fix this you son of a bitch! You FIX THIS!_

 

But he gets no reply.

 

0-0-0

It’s a small establishment. Similar enough to the Harvelle Roadhouse that Sam thinks he may recognize at least half of the patrons. They don’t even look at him twice, too interested in their drinks or conversations.

Sam asks the bartender for whatever’s on tap and an order of chili fries and while the man’s back is turned he slips toward the bathrooms and finds the kitchen entrance, peeks through as a server comes out with a tray of nachos and still sizzling steak. He sees the back room, on the other side of the dishwashers. He inhales deeply, lets it out and slips into the kitchen, moves forward with purpose, ignores the strange looks the cook gives him and pushes into the back room with his heart beating quickly in his chest;

“Hey!”

There are five of them and they turn black eyes on him as he pushes into the room, launch up out of their seats and let their eyes slide to black.

Sam lifts his hand, palm out and feels the symbol Anna had drawn BURN bright. It’s quick. Like a strobe light, small considering, but they all freeze, black eyes wide and glaring, bodies shaking with tension.

Sam knocks the door closed and exhales, tilts his face up and calls out; “Anna—“

The gunshot catches him unaware in more ways than one. The surprise of the noise first of all, the proximity second and the solid shock of pain third.

He pitches forward with an aborted cry, splinters of wood flying around him and collides face first with the wall. He feels his nose pop and a splash of blood over his lips, white specks dancing in his vision. Fire spreading all up his back, ears ringing. Blood running down his side, shoulder aching and half numb beneath the pressure, lacerating pain of a shattered scapula and chunks of wood embedded in his flesh.

He lies there dazed for a moment, blinking desperately in an attempt to stay conscious, breath BURNING in his lungs as he feels air leaking out into his chest cavity with wet bubbling noises in his throat, such unforgiving PRESSURE—

Patrons in the other room are yelling and there is the thunderous noise of bodies running for the exits and slowly—slowly, the door swings open, pulverized into something that only vaguely resembles a door in truth, there’s a huge chunk of it missing.

The cook and the bartender are standing there, eyes black and smiling. The bartender is holding a double barrel, it’s still smoking slightly, little whisper thin wafts of gunpowder scented air.

“Boy, you are one stupid son of a bitch,” The bar tender ejects the spent cartridges and makes a show of slotting two more into place.

The cook chuckles. It’s a dumb almost cartoony sound and Sam grinds his teeth and rolls a little more onto his side, arm shaking and lifts his palm at them.

They blink, look at one another and laugh; “One time use, kid… Tough break.”

The bartender snaps the breach shut and lifts the gun to his shoulder, whistles merrily as he aims down the barrel.

**_“SHUT YOUR EYES!”_ **

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	26. Borrowed Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was without power yesterday or else I would have something for Dean's birthday. If all goes well tonight I shall have something by morning.

0-0-0

He has buckshot in his back. His upper arm and side look like bloody swiss cheese and he’s coughing up blood. He doesn’t know if that’s from his nose or his lung, doesn’t have time to think about it honestly. Barely has time to slam his eyes closed and turn his head away before the room is inundated with BRIGHTNESS and the screams of demons burning up.

He listens to the bodies slam into the floor and walls and the table and the scurry of Anna’s little feet as she hurries over and drops to her knees beside him.

“Sam?”

He grins with red teeth, more of a wince really; “You’re late,” And coughs around the growing full PRESSURE in his chest.

Her eyes are wide, unblinking, rake over him and back to his face; “You’re lung’s collapsed…” She scrapes her teeth over her lip and wraps her deceptively thin little arms around his chest, hauls him up into a sitting position and physically restrains him as he chokes and claws at his throat mindlessly; “Hold still,” She pulls him to her chest, fits one hand to the small of his back, the other to his forehead and her grace BURNS through him.

He makes a noise in his throat, low and dull and pained and grinds his teeth, claws at air and the tail of her coat. Feels the pellets moving in the canals they’ve cut into his body, forcing themselves out from whence they’ve come. His vision whites out and he sags back against her arm, breath stolen, chest deflated, blood bubbling from the wounds— Then an itching ache as she forces them to close and heal.

It’s dizzying, leaves him feeling nauseated and barely clinging to consciousness, body still in shock but uninjured.

She doesn’t repair his clothing, doesn’t take the time to will away the blood or bruises, just yanks at his jacket sleeve and says; “Come on, more are coming.”

Sam opens his eyes and stares around, sees corpses without eyes and gaping bloody mouths. The smell is toxic and he gags into one bloody hand as Anna pulls him bodily upward and pushes him toward the door. She snaps her fingers in the direction of the fryers and they spontaneously ignite, boil over. Flames eating away at the building like living things.

There is a crowd outside in the parking lot, screaming and driving away too quickly, a few people are on cell phones talking to emergency services.

Anna shoves him behind the wheel of the Impala and turns to leave but Sam catches her elbow; “The grace—“ He chokes, coughs and spits leftover blood onto the gravel; “Where is it? Did they have it?”

Anna’s face is grim; “They didn’t have it… There was a residue on the bar tender, that’s why I didn’t show up immediately, but it wasn’t the same.”

“What do you mean?”

She grabs his hand and pries his fingers off her coat, leans in and hisses the words; “It means that they were around someone else with grace… Someone that wasn’t Dean.”

“Angels? You think—“

“I think I’m going to do what I should have done in the first place and make sure Dean’s grace is actually gone and not just recharging… It’s possible he drained himself completely burning that demon and they’re still looking for him. In which case, they may already know where he is.”

Sam stopped her again. “Do you—do you think Castiel could have…”

Her expression closes off quickly, but not fast enough and Sam sees the worry in her eyes before she just seems to disappear completely between one step and the next.

0-0-0

They bade him watch Dean. So he watched.

They ordered him to stand down when the demon possessing the man named Craig Hoffman used Sam’s cell phone and called Dean.

THEY ordered Castiel to return to heaven and wait while the demons beat Dean and tried to steal the grace Castiel had given him.

Why?

He bowed his head and accepted without question, even as it burned in his chest.

Zechariah sent him away with orders… **_Call to Anna… Bring our sister home. Tell her you are considering rebellion, that you want to think for yourself, gain her trust and we will bring her back. We will save her!_**

Castiel ACHED. QUESTIONED… Doubted. But said nothing.

He ignored Sam’s cries for help, his yelling in anger and his frantic pleas when Dean began seizing on the side of the road.

He HURT and everything felt so, so WRONG. Why would Father wish them to let the demons have that grace? Why would Father wish them to allow Dean harm? Why did that FEELING from Jimmy Novak still linger?

**_You have Darkened, Castiel… You are no longer Pure, do you understand the severity of this? That Human has caused this! HE has Darkened you!_ **

Castiel stood and stared down at the hands of his vessel. What did that mean, DARKENED… He couldn’t see the brightness of himself. Had never been able to. What had changed in him because of Dean. What horrible thing had Dean done to make him impure?

Angels were meant to be pure. What was one that was no longer? All Castiel could think of was demons. How Dean had prayed every so often and asked why Sam’s color was going black. Why was Sam darkening?

Could it be the same thing? Is it possible that Dean came back from the Pit with the power to corrupt not just human souls, but an Angel itself?

**_He is POISON, Castiel. You would do well to remember this. You serve HEAVEN. Not Man. Not Dean Winchester. You serve GOD! Don’t fall to his temptation, don’t Fall, Castiel… Come back to us. Come back where you belong or you shall be destroyed!_ **

He called to Anna, showed her his wounds and told her his plans of rebellion, asked for her guidance and help. He asked her to meet him in a shipping yard in Washington state in two days’ time. The rainforest on the peninsula was a perfect shield. The trees seemed as if they had a grace of their own. It would disguise the others presence entirely.

He sat and waited. Watched the boats go in and out, heard Sam’s prayers and Bobby Singer’s as well. Heard the indistinct bids for communication from Sputnik. Images and smells and a bottomless, helpless NEEDWORRYFEARSADNESS.

_He smells wrong—AFRAIDHURT— He sleeps and thinks of fire and— BADHANDSSHARPCUTTERSANDTEETHANDCLAWSANDHUNGRYEYESANDFACESTHATCHANGE— He is good to me and should not be hurt. I tried. I bit them—SEEMYFANGSI’LLKILLYA— I tried to save him—FUCKERSRUNRUNRUNI’LLBITERIPTEARYOUANEWONEHE’SMINE— but they didn’t fight correctly. There is an OTHER here close—SWEETSKYEARTHANDRAINSMELLLIKEYOU— I can smell it, but the marks WarmSoftMaker put on the walls keep it away. Will the marks save Him—MINEWARMGIVESMEFOODTHROWSTHEBALLBALLBALLBALLILOVETHEBALLILOVE HIMTOO— He smells wrong—_

The images she sends are blurry, but he sees the marks on the walls, sees Dean lying on a bed, pale and unmoving and Bobby Singer sitting nearby doing something Sputnik doesn’t understand but knows is MAKING something she’s familiar with. Her thoughts repeat over and over ceaselessly and with each repetition something grows tighter in his core.

Bobby starts praying again, he isn’t even aware he’s doing it. Thinks he’s just reprimanding Castiel in his head. Thinking of what he’s going to say when he sees the angel, talking to himself. _He ain’t doing good. There’s a lump on the back of his head the size of an orange. He must have hit it or got it hit… I don’t know if he’s gonna wake up. I hope he wakes up, I buried him once, I don’t want to do it again… What if something’s wrong? His brain coulda’ burst… Hell, I don’t know… But he don’t deserve this. Castiel, or whoever you are, I hope you can see this. I hope you know what you did to him… Dean’s a good kid, a damned good kid—and he don’t deserve to go out like this. Not because of a fucking aneurism or whatever this is. He didn’t deserve any of this. Now I don’t know what kind of Heaven Hell Mixer you guys are planning but why couldn’t you have just left us humans out of it? What’d we ever do to deserve this? We’re just livin’ our lives and you drop outta the sky like a fuckin A-Bomb and tell Dean he’s responsible? Well fuck you. He ain’t done nothin’ but maybe love his family too hard. That’s his only sin, caring too much… Maybe if you big winged assholes’d take a page outta his book this whole shitfest could have been avoided…_ He pauses, counts to twenty, mutters something about the damned cable needle and continues; _Yeah, he ain’t no saint, but he didn’t deserve to go to hell. Maybe if you’d been doin’ your job and making sure DEMONS weren’t running amuck on the fucking earth, he wouldn’ta had to do what he did to save Sam. Maybe their mama wouldn’t have been burned alive on the ceiling. Maybe my…_ He sighs, pauses and rubs his face; _I’m just sayin’ you shoulda been doing your jobs and keeping the demons in hell where they belong._

Castiel bows his head, wonders what his job really is.

**_You Obey HEAVEN. Not man… Not Dean Winchester. You serve HEAVEN!_ **

But… But why does it feel so wrong?

0-0-0

Sam is shaking by the time he reaches the hotel room. He strips off his bloody clothes and stuffs them into a garbage bag, takes a long shower and rubs the dried gore from his body, feels delicate soft pockmarks in his skin where the pellets had burst through. They aren’t visible when he turns his back to the mirror, but he feels them for hours after the fact, slowly healing until his skin is unblemished and it’s as if he had never been shot.

He redresses and sits on the end of his bed, stares at Dean’s laptop sitting abandoned in the middle of the quilt and waits for Anna.

She appears looking restless, wrings her fingers and glances at the upper corners of the room a few times.

Sam rubs his face and looks at her; “What’d you find?”

She inhales and lets it out, “They didn’t take it.”

Sam’s breath punches out of his chest and his shoulders sag. “So they’re still looking for him—“

“There’s more.”

He looks up; “What more?”

“Dean’s clothes are covered in demon ash… It’s likely they know or have an idea where he is. I warded the area around the cabin but it’s not infallible. It’ll hide them but if they get within visual range they’ll know he’s there and it’s only a matter of time before that happens,” She tilts her head at him curiously, then looks away. “I can’t stay, the angels are looking for me.”

Sam exhales noisily and nods; “Is there any way you can heal Dean?”

“Not without alerting them to where he is… The demons who attacked him are gone, but I don’t know who the angel was that had been in that room. Dean’s so weak right now I could barely feel it and I was just outside… If I send off a flare of grace trying to heal him—even a small one, they’ll find us both.”

“They—the angels, have a plan for him. They’re not going to let him die… are they?”

She looks at him with an expression on the borderline of pity. “I don’t know.”

Sam rubs his face and swallows with a measure of difficulty, nods but doesn’t look up; “Thank’s, Anna.”

She leaves in a small burst of wind and a smell like sunshine and Sam bends over his knees still shivering. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, long enough that his nose clogs and his face feels hot and swollen and there is an ache in his shoulders from remaining hunched so long.

Hours may have passed, Sam isn’t sure, only that when he lifts his head it’s dark outside and spitting a fine rain like mist. He rubs his face dry on his sleeve and calls Bobby.

He answers on the third ring, “Sam? Tell me—“

“They don’t have it… He’s still in danger—worse than that they might know where he is.”

“Shit,” He sighs in resignation; “Well, what do we do?”

“Is your car warded?”

“Of course.”

“Any way you can get him back to your place?”

“Not alone… If he has another fit—“

Sam exhales; “Okay… Has he—is he doing any better?”

Bobby makes a sound, a grunt of indecision; “Not really, he’s doing that posturing thing again when it happens.”

“Which one?”

“He had a bad one a couple hours ago, but now it—“ He exhales, “He went all stiff and pulled his arms up to his chest, I can’t remember which one that is.”

Sam wracks his brain, still feels fuzzy and uncoordinated; “Decorticate I think… It’s in the pamphlet.”

Bobby grunted again and was quiet for a three count. “Sam, I don’t know if—“

He knew what Bobby was going to say, knew it like he knew the sky was blue and that he wouldn’t be able to handle it if he let the older man finish the sentence; “I’ll call you when it’s safe.”

Bobby muttered a curse, “Yeah, alright.”

Sam ended the call and hunched forward with his fingers tangled in his hair.

The clock on the bedside table clicked over another hour.

Sam pushed himself up and paced, scratched his nails on the legs of his jeans, ground his teeth and contemplated breaking something.

The phone rang and Sam answered it with a sense of urgency.

“I’m here,” Ruby’s voice was low, determined; “Where are you?”

And he told her.

0-0-0

The others watch him from a distance. Hidden even to his own senses but he knows they’re there. He knows they’re watching, listening. Castiel waits… and waits.

Boats pass on the water going out early in hope of crab.

Bobby shouts at him in prayer, angry—Dean’s in the midst of another seizure and Sam isn’t answering his phone.

Castiel stands at the railing and waits. Senses the wind blowing and allows himself a moment to sink deeper into his human shell and feel it. It’s cold… frigid. Stings sinuses and lungs.

The ACHE in his core is still there. Grows worse with every word and image Bobby launches like bullets and every feathery brush of fearconfusionsadness Sputnik sends at him.

Anna does not come, does not answer when he calls for her. He casts about for a sign of her grace and finds none.

They are angry. Their Voices crash and They hold themselves defensively, palms turned and ready to draw their weapons. To strike and Hold.

They ask what he has done. How he had warned her.

He tells them that he had not.

They strike and ask again.

Castiel tells them that he doesn’t know what went wrong. He hadn’t warned her, had done nothing—

There is pain and heat and confusion. They pry the memory out of him and send him away, furious at him but uncomprehending as to how this had happened. Anna has sullied herself with human emotions. She should have been sympathetic to his pleas, she should have come to help him. She should have needed to protect him, yet she left him alone.

Something’s happened, she acted incorrectly. It went wrong.

Wrong.

Castiel peers down, unable to penetrate the haze of heaven with borrowed human eyes, all he sees is what the human mind interoperates the order and purity of heaven to be. Castiel sees heaven around him as no angel has before. He sees boardrooms and cubicles and offices and the other angels in suits and ties and sensible shoes. It’s unusual, hypnotizing because what he sees and what his other senses tell him is there are two drastically different things.

The others stare and whisper and look at him in disdain.

Castiel feels for the first time, unwanted by his brothers and sisters. He slips away unnoticed and finds a sunny Tuesday afternoon. Stands there and watches, tries to ignore the tumultuous MASS in his core, but it eats away at him. Chews like demonic teeth, cuts and tears and destroys what composure he had regained. Spills thick DOUBT into him, fills him with it until there is nothing else but that drowning pressure. He pulls in his grace until barely any is visible. Veiled but not invisible. They can’t suspect him of hiding because if they really want to find him they will.

And he goes to Dean.

He stands in the corner of the room and watches. Watches for hours as Bobby shifts Dean’s body around, from one side to the other to prevent bedsores. Checks the skin of his chest and side, livid bruises against pale flesh, Castiel can barely sense a flicker of the grace in Dean’s chest. It is fighting, trying to rebuild itself only to be drained away again trying to heal him and failing. Bobby puts his knitting supplies away in his bag and carefully fits the new sweater over Sputnik’s head, eases it around her little body, carries her against his chest outside so she can relieve herself while he puts his things away, packing in preparation of moving Dean somewhere safer, or perhaps taking him to the hospital against Sam’s urgings.

Bobby mutters to himself, fusses with this and that, drinks coffee and wants scotch but can’t let himself drink when Dean needs him to be sober. He spends a while reading a book about angels then sets it aside and goes to the stove again to make food.

Castiel watches him prop Dean up against one shoulder and spoon canned chicken broth between his lips, swipes a damp cloth over his face and neck, fights to wake him and loses.

Sputnik doesn’t look away from Dean. Reluctantly she lets Bobby pick her up and carry her carefully outside to relieve herself, halfheartedly eats the noodles and chunks of chicken the older hunter had strained from the soup and the crusts he pinches from his bologna sandwich. But she doesn’t look away from Dean. Watches and worries.

Castiel can feel the band of her soul reaching out toward Dean’s, trying to draw some kind of reaction from him. Confused and sad when he doesn’t react.

Castiel remembers the dark dank of Hell, finding Dean pinned and struggling, tearing with teeth and nails and a blade in his fist. How his green eyes had been bloodshot and crusted, slowly… slowly darkening… How he had wept as he’d cut. Bloody and ravaged and covered in his own and demonic fluids. Hurting because he hurt, tearing because he was torn. Dean had been a beacon of light even in the blackness. Castiel remembered the BLAZE of his soul… Remembered reaching down and plucking him up. The sting of Hellfire, the stink of his very form burning, scorched.

Castiel remembered the clarion call—And nothing more of it. He came to himself sitting in a bright space, calm and comfortable, a joyful face telling him he had done well.

He had not questioned the removal of those memories. His superiors had told him what had occurred.

Dean Winchester’s soul had nearly shattered and Castiel had torn a piece of his grace away to temper the fractures and hold the human together.

**_You were born back on the arms of your Garrison, Castiel. Unable to make the journey on your own… We nearly lost you._ **

He had looked down at himself, the colorless solidity of his celestial form and the stinging tender pucker of a scar.

**_A badge of honor!_** Zechariah had said and displayed his hands and wings in congratulations. **_Painful memories like that… It would only drive you mad._**

He had believed.

Castiel remembered the color of Dean’s soul. The BRILLIANCE of it. How could something that had shaken his core just by the sight of it, be bad?

He reached out and searched for it, found a thin, flickering aura, dim and weakened and flashing violently in fear and pain and despair.

What… what had happened to it? What had happened to Dean? What had Dean changed in him simply by accepting the gift of his grace?

What had really happened when Castiel found him in hell?

0-0-0

Ruby paces back and forth in front of him, hands clenching and unclenching. “So they didn’t get it.”

Sam shook his head, “But he’s not waking up.”

“And if he doesn’t wake up—“

“He can’t help,” Sam clenches his hands into fists. “Is there any other way to stop her?”

She looks at him with barely controlled pain; “She’s not going to let you get close enough to stab her, not again… And we’re out of time,” She inhales and leans against the wall; “I was going to call you earlier because I found a golden ticket… I found someone who can tell us where Lilith is, but we’ve only got one window and if we don’t have a weapon—“ Her voice trails off. “We were so close.”

Sam feels it rising in his middle, hot and dark and so—so powerful. “What do you know about Obsession?”

She blinks, shakes her head; “You mean the perfume?”

“Demonic Obsession.”

She looks taken aback, “I know it’s some pretty high level shit… Why?”

He rubs his hands on the thighs of his jeans, can’t quite meet her eyes; “Demon blood is one sure way to Obsess someone,” He breathes in and out.

“Yeah, it gives the demon a power kick too. Like sticking your finger in a light socket,” Ruby blinks and looks at him like maybe she thinks he’s joking; “Wait… are you accusing me of—“

He doesn’t answer.

“Sam, why would I do that?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

She shakes her head, “Sam…” She rocks back a little, looks like she doesn’t know if she should be offended or amused, “Why would I do that? Kind of defeats the whole purpose of stopping the Apocalypse… I just want to make sure Lilith goes down. The harder the better— I mean fuck, we’re on the same side—I’ve killed other demons for you. I have the big wigs on my ass, do you understand that? I am one little demon against all of Hell and YOU are trying to—”

Sam flinches, grinds his teeth.

“I’m trying to stop this, Sam. I’m trying to HELP you—“ She stomps over and flattens her palms to either side of his face, forces his head up and his eyes to meet hers; “Have I don’t anything— ANYTHING— to make you think I was trying to obsess you!”

He swallows and tries to pull away.

“You remember what it felt like when Azazel called to you, right? How you didn’t know if you were crazy or not? The fear, the anger?” She pulls his hair, digs her nails into his scalp; “You told me what that felt like, Sam. All those thoughts—the thoughts he put into your head. The things he wanted you to do to Dean—“

He pushes her away and she stands there, indignant in her fury, eyes black and lips rolled back from her teeth; “Have I ONCE asked you to hurt Dean? Or anyone that wasn’t a demon!”

He grinds his teeth, can’t look at her.

“Obsession can go both ways, Sam… I remember being human, OK? And every time I gave you my blood I remembered more of it—I FELT more of it and it SUCKED ASS, okay? It really sucked, but I did it anyway because I knew it was the only way to stop Lilith and that’s how much I want her gone, do you understand that? I would have died for you!”

He looks at her and something in his eyes is frightened and angry and desperate for release. “Would it work?”

She stops mid-sentence and just stares at him. “Would what work?”

“Would it—would it make me strong enough to do it?”

She inhales a shaky breath and rubs moisture from her eyes. “I thought you—“

“Would it work!” His voice comes out more forceful than he’d intended, almost a shout.

She flinches; “Yeah… Yeah, it’d work, but you’d have to drink a lot… more than I’ve got.”

“How much and how do I prevent them from Obsessing me while I do it?”

She works her tongue against the backs of her teeth nervously, pushes breath she doesn’t need out; “You’d have to drain them, then kill them. If they’re dead the connection between them and you is severed.”

“And the blood won’t become useless if they’re dead?”

“Not if you drain them before you kill them.”

Sam nods, shivers and nods again, feels a hot pressure rising in his throat, in his sinuses. Thinks of Dean lying in that cabin near death, of Bobby and all the people he’s met and saved. Thinks of what would happen to them if Lilith won. If the apocalypse goes on they would all die, not just die, they would be decimated. Tortured, possibly dragged to hell—

Sam thinks of that look on Dean’s face on that back road in Kentucky. The horror and revulsion and hopelessness as he’d told Sam what had happened to him in Hell. Sam imagines Dean before, all smiles and confidence and laughter, tries to remember how many times he’s seen Dean smile and truly laugh since his return and can remember only once. And how painfully it had shattered after a single dream.

He would save millions. BILLIONS of people… And it—it would be worth it.

Sam inhales deeply, pushes down the fear and swallows it; “Then let’s do it.”

Ruby blinks at him in something akin to awe then shakes her head, “You know what’ll happen if you do this, right? There’s no walking away. Building up slow like before would have been OK, your body would have built up a tolerance. Drowning yourself in it like this—Sam, it could kill you… Or worse.”

“Do we have any other options?” He looks at her earnestly, heart pounding in his chest.

“Fuck like bunnies until the Apocalypse?”

He clenches his jaw.

She moves forward slowly, touches his hair and draws him close, bows over him and breathes in the scent of him; “You don’t have to—“

“Yeah,” He chokes down the fear one last time and reaches for the knife in her boot; “Yeah, I do.”

It’s not rough, not angry and full of teeth and scratching hands and smears of blood like it usually is. Sex with Ruby has always been these things, fire and snarls and black eyes. Sometimes he’s been convinced he could taste the hellfire in her.

This time it’s different, almost tender. For a while he forgets what she is because she feels so human in his arms, soft and warm and clinging desperately. Eyes the color of rich coffee locked on his, fingers pressing into his flesh. She looks at him like he is the sun and moon and stars and for a while he feels like maybe he is.

For a while he feels like maybe he can survive this and everything will be OK.

She finds each of his scars, traces round the edges of the tattoo on his chest but never touches it, slides her nails gently over the little barely visible ridges she’s left on his back before. It’s almost as if she’s seeing him for the first time, with her eyes and hands and body.

She giggles—actually giggles while she’s perched atop his hips and says for a guy who didn’t want to fuck like bunnies until the apocalypse he’s sure doing a good job of it.

They shower the scent of sweat away and Sam contemplates calling Bobby, hefts the weight of his phone in his hand and exhales deeply. He knows, deep down, that this isn’t going to end well. It will either kill him or turn him into a monster. He writes a note, just three lines and leaves the keys to the Impala on top of it, locks the motel door and leaves the room key under the sun visor on the driver’s side of the car. Climbs into the passenger seat of Ruby’s Mustang and leaves.

He’ll save the world, he’ll kill Lilith and when it’s done he’ll make Ruby kill him so there’s no chance he would come back and face his brother. Dean can’t do it, he’s already said he can’t and Sam can’t put that weight on Bobby either. So he takes that choice away from them and tucks it in his pocket.

“Ruby?”

She looks at him with her lip between her teeth.

“When this is over you have to promise me something.”

She hesitates, “Anything.”

“When I’ve killed Lilith… You have to do exactly what I tell you. No matter what.”

“Sam—“

“Just promise me. Whatever I tell you, you’ll do it.”

She stares at him, looks back to the road and bobs her head; “Okay.”

0-0-0

The Angels Hush.

The Earth screams its agony as it turns, the universe wails low and deep. Spinning so fast and yet so slow to the creatures that inhabit it. It’s eternal fall continues, blackness pushes its way in where once there was light.

Anna sits at the top of Mars Hill and watches dawn break over Maine . She knows, in her bones as they say, what will happen today. Heaven, though silent, buzzes with energy. Excitement.

The Day has come. It’s pink and red and Anna somehow finds that fitting. By midnight the world will be in the throes of Armageddon.

Anna finds the sensation of dawn pale in comparison to what she remembers it as a human. As an angel she feels each particle of light bursting across the horizon to collide with her skin at two-hundred-ninety-nine million seven-hundred ninety-two thousand four-hundred and fifty-eight meters a second.  It feels strangely warm and effortless. She misses not being able to feel each photon collide with her human shell. Misses the smell of the wind, not the molecules on it bursting against her—Anna misses being unaware, being OBLIVIOUS and so content with the mysteries of the world. Her meager five senses. She will miss this world when it is gone.

Warmth tingles through her core and she presses her angelicself close, lets the knowledge bleed out of her and sensation rush in. The pulse of the earth quiets and there is only the wind and the chill and the sun peeking over the horizon. Catching on the treetops, highlighting their peaks like little teeth and scratching clawed fingers.

She tilts her face into the sun and breathes in the smell of chill and earth and fading starlight. She stretches out her senses slowly and finds Sam Winchester in a car with a demon driving and another in the trunk. They’re driving fast to the east. She can’t hear his thoughts, hasn’t really ever been able to because of the demon blood. It wraps around him, through him, suffocates him and he doesn’t even know it—lets it happen and asks for more. She had hoped against all hope, that he had stopped. He had been so gentle in the car, his soul had been inexorably pushing back the demonic influence and now he was floundering again.

She withdrew, diminished herself and focused only on listening, hiding her presence. She wrapped her wings around her human form and became invisible to any human who happened to look toward her.

Anna waited, listened—and when it happened.

She HEARD.

0-0-0

Castiel waits until Bobby is gone before he manifests fully in the room.

Dean is lying still, too still, half curled into the fetal position with his brows only slightly scrunched in pain.

He is still deeply unconscious, humans may even have called this mildly comatose. Dean is lost back in that miniscule universe of memories that had torn free. He’s overwhelmed by them. Castiel may not be able to see him, just his body, but he could feel it. The NEED and FEAR and HOPELESSNESS.

And this, on some level, was Castiel’s fault.

If he had been there, at Dean’s side, he would have been able to help, or at least aid Dean in fighting the demons back. Dean wouldn’t have exerted himself—wouldn’t have ripped that protective barrier around the grace and his memories open.

_I told you they were bad, I TOLD YOU they would hurt you… but you didn’t listen. Now look…  Why don’t you ever LISTEN?_

Sputnik is looking at him from her cushion beside the bed. She looks so sad, so lost. She lifts her head and whines at him, thumps her tail hopefully, afraid to hope. Even with the bandages wrapped around her chest she looks up at the angel and questions, asks why Dean won’t wake up, why Sam is gone.

She doesn’t understand. Human language doesn’t translate well into something dogs understand. Dogs are intelligent enough to learn some of their human counterpart’s tongue, even respond to it or attempt to make the sound of some words. Sputnik is still too young to understand the concept of an injury like Dean’s. She hadn’t even been old enough to understand the concept of All-Maker when Castiel had picked her up.

Castiel wonders if Dean understands the fact that Sputnik knows about God and is beginning to grasp the idea that she has a soul. Nothing near as powerful as a human’s soul, but it’s there. Castiel can feel it reaching toward him and pulling him toward Dean. Pleading with him to help, to make it better.

It’s a novel concept, staring down at her, this small creature, with bones broken by demons and hearing only her concern for Dean, her NEED for Dean to be OK.

It was the same. Different, but the same as the feeling Jimmy had thrust forward as he begged for his daughter to be released. Love…

Love. What a funny thing.

Angels were disgusted by human’s concept of love. Tainted and blurred as it is by lust.

Angels were created to love God, to do his bidding and love his creations. It is a pure Love.

THIS, what Jimmy had felt for his daughter and similarly, what Sputnik, Sam and Bobby felt for Dean was the same… But what occasionally drifted into Dean’s thoughts when they looked at one another, was different. Somehow it—it was _different._

But WHY? WHY was it different? Why did it make something in his core ACHE? Why did it make his vessel’s breath catch and his wings tingle? What was so DIFFERENT so IMPORTANT about it?

WHAT WAS _THIS?_ And why did it strike deeper into his core than the purest LOVE shared by his brothers and sisters?

Castiel crouched beside her and fitted his hands against Sputnik’s jaws, laid his intangible ones against her fur and the bandages, soothed her fear and against what he’d been told, healed her.

The tension in her little body eased and she wiggled between his hands licking her lips in an attempt to get to his face, but he stood instead and turned to stare down at Dean.

0-0-0

To Dean time is at a standstill. There is only pain and darkness and screams of voices who beg for help but find no mercy.

There isn’t any rhyme or reason to it now, there had been in the beginning, memories played out beneath his lids, but now everything is indistinct, dark. Faceless shapes, blood and pain—FUCK the pain!

He remembers this. This feeling of sinking deep into himself. He’d felt it while the hellhounds had torn him apart. A sense of being Separated. Released.  Like a helium balloon lost from its string.

_I’m dying…_

_Cas, I’m dying—_

“Hello, Dean.”

He doesn’t recognize the voice.

“Come on, open your eyes.”

He tries and light stabs into them, he blinks it away and finds himself sitting at a table in a room that looks like it’s been ripped right from some magazine. It reminds him of images he’s seen of the inside of Buckingham Palace, beautiful and extravagant and everything’s covered in gold and marble and pearls with frescos on the walls and a mural on the vaulted ceiling that looks like it’s come straight out of some giant European church.

Dean blinks around startled, feels like his head may pop off his shoulders and roll around, looks down at himself and sees naked skin covered in cuts and bruises and burns, some of his intestines are sticking out of a gash in his side and Alistair has cut away his genitals again, they leave a bloody scoop missing from his abdomen and he looks up ashamed at the person sitting across from him.

Angel…

It’s an angel in a stiff grey suit. He’s balding, chubby and his eyes blaze like fog lamps out of his head. He is all BRIGHTNESS bleeding through between his skin cells and a corona of light swirling behind his head like one of those plasma disks off Star Trek movies.

Zechariah smiles, “Hi, Dean. How are you?”

He tries to speak but coughs up blood instead.

“I was afraid of that.”

“’m I dying?” Dean finds his voice but it doesn’t say what he wants it to say.

“You had a stroke while you were trying to kill that demon… A massive stroke.”

“’n you fix it?”

Zechariah looks solemn; “No, I can’t. That kind of damage is beyond me.”

“Cas?”

_Dean?_

“I’m Castiel’s superior for a reason, Dean. I could squash him like a bug if I wanted.”

“Don’t wanna die—“

_Dean—_

0-0-0

Emotions, are tricky things. In just a few short months Castiel has learned to identify more than nine of them. Surprise, shock, despair, confusion, fear, embarrassment, attraction, sadness, determination—

Now there was another, a middle ground of sorts between despair and determination. It was oddly calm, and yet behind it a buzz of noise, thought and panic. He wouldn’t know the name for this feeling for a long while yet, but Indecision felt a lot like crippling doubt mixed with the urge to scream in frustration at his uselessness.

There was an unsettling urge in his core to HELP Dean. To disregard what he had been ordered by HEAVEN to do and attempt everything in his power to support and follow Dean Winchester.

This pale, shivering human form dwarfed by blankets and bandages and a purpleblack bruise spanning the length of his face from temple to jaw on the left side. This sad creature that had spent forty years in hell and been raised to serve heaven—only to reject that destiny and strike off into uncharted territory  with only his wits, his failing physical health, his demon-infected little brother and a dog with short legs and an attitude problem.

What audacity the Winchesters possessed.

Yes, there had been men and women to oppose heaven before, but they were ‘brought around’ eventually, or crushed beneath angelic heels.

Dean and Sam had not been. Dean was defiant still, even so far as to take the grace Castiel had used to comfort him and make it his own. To changeUSE it as no human before him had been able.

Dean Winchester was not an angel, he was a human imbued with grace. He was human… but more.

Castiel remembered Dean’s soul from the brief time he’d been able to see it, unfiltered through the solidity of his body, how pure it had been, even if scarred by Hell. How beautiful.

For all their strength human souls were so easily tarnished, so easily darkened. Although worn from his short human life, as all souls were, he had burned with a fierce brightness. Like a beacon in the night, or so humans would say.

Castiel stood over him and stared, head tilted to the side, mourning the loss of his vision because he longed to see that brightness again, longed for the surety it had settled in his core when he had spotted him in Hell. The angel longed for something he could not name and had no memory of, but craved with a familiarity that frightened him.

Castiel bumped the bed gently, twisted his hands together and drew his lip between his teeth.

Dean didn’t stir.

The angel spoke softly with his vessel’s voice, quiet barely a whisper; “Dean?”

Nothing.

0-0-0

“We don’t want you to die either. We went through the trouble of pulling you out of Hell once, it cost lives and we’ll do it again, don’t worry. It may take some time, but we’ll get you back.”

Dean bows his head, feels himself shivering, images flashing in his head, pain and fear and humiliation. “Can’t you stop it?”

Zechariah splays his hands; “I can’t… But, I know someone who might. I would have to have you word that you would do anything he says though. He’s not the sort of guy you want to double cross. But he’s powerful enough to heal you. Powerful enough to not only heal this, but heal the rest too.”

0-0-0

Why would Heaven want this man—this man who had once before and probably could again DEFY God’s Written Will—Why would Heaven want this creature defenseless? Why would they want to take something so strong and strange and beautiful and break it?

Because he is different. Because he frightens them… He is an unknown—a threat to everything the Host has ever known to be infallible. They will break him because they do not understand and refuse to try…

All the damage that has been done, all the horror Dean has seen, he still has such a strong sense of right and wrong.

It feels strange, for an angel to take lessons in morality from a human who until a year before, in human time, had been drunken, sopped in sex and theft and lies.

Castiel moves forward carefully, puts one knee on the bed, then the other, stretches his vessel out on the mattress across from Dean. Not touching, just observing, cataloging his physical appearance while his intangible hands hovered over him, feeling out the wounded parts of the hunter’s body.

Broken ribs and damaged swelling in his left hip from a partial dislocation, cuts on his back and arms from being thrown around. Bruises and injured muscles. Scrapes and scratches from the seizure trapped under all that debris. Castiel peers deeper, deeper—and finds it. An aneurism, bulging and near to bursting. It’s putting pressure on his spinal cord, shutting off the blood to parts of his brain. Strangling the life out of him slow, trapping him in his head with nowhere to go.

Why would Zechariah demand Castiel stay away from him if Dean was so dangerously injured? It made no sense. Something—something wasn’t right.

The pain in his core doubles and the urge to touch—to FIX returns.

Castiel makes a decision… It’s not his first, but it feels like it should be. Feels like it should have been his ONLY decision all along, but he doesn’t have the strength to go back and change that anymore, is afraid this Decision wouldn’t mean as much if he hadn’t had to earn it like this.

He shifts closer, presses his brow into Dean’s and rests his palm to his chest, lets his fingers fit into the hollow of his throat over the bruises there from the demons strangling him, butts his knees against Dean’s shins through the blanket and Speaks to Dean’s grace as quietly as he can. Hoping—afraid to hope, that the hunter will hear him again.

_Dean… Please, come back. I’m sorry… I’m sorry for everything, but Sam needs you… Lilith isn’t going to break the last seal. She IS the last seal, and if Sam kills her._

There is no physical reaction, but Castiel can feel Dean’s soul vibrate with the words, thrashing and trying EVERYTHING to break free of its fleshy prison. Wounded and close to breaking as he is Dean fights to wake up—and can’t.

Castiel presses closer grinds his teeth because the heart of his vessel is beating rapidly, quickening his breath and YERNING for something Castiel has no name for, cannot possibly remember… He feels that pocket of sealed memories in his head for the first time. Like a ball of heat and nebulous, brimming energy. Something in there wants OUT, something craves freedom and Castiel is frightened by its OTHERNESS. He has never known DESIRE like this before. Never known of anything stronger than his love of God and the Host and his NEED to follow orders and remain eternally organized. This SCREAMS of chaos and strangeness and the unknown, of a potentiality Castiel has never known could exist because until that moment he has been sure all potentialities have been played out and taken into account in God’s Plan.

There are so many questions, so many doubts SCREAMING in him they feel as if they have intent of their own, feel like they may wrap their long invisible fingers around his core and BURN.

But at the same instant he is sorely afraid… it feels so RIGHT deep in his chest at the center of that scar where the grace he had given to Dean once resided, that place he had begun to identify as his Heart, as it beat and pulsed and stole his breath when he was near the elder Winchester.

Angels don’t have hearts. They don’t have stomachs or reproductive organs. They are not like humans in that respect. Their true forms are timeless, sexless, all knowing things surrounded and filled with GRACE. It has been a long running joke within the Host, the speculation of what Humans believed Angels to look like. Some of them were laughable, others frightening but all of them spoke of humanity’s ignorance.

The truth of it was, angels varied in shape and size but retained unified features. A head, arms and wings in varying number. Luminous and often numerous an Angel’s wings conveyed one third of their intent. Hands another third and lastly their faces.  There is a formality in showing one’s intent, Stances and Posing. Submissive, Accepting, Rejecting and Dominant wing posture and hand arrangements.

An angel never unclasped their sixth hands. Never stopped praying and praising God on High. The other four hands were for working and Expressing. It was considered extremely rude to close oneself off with folded wings and lowered hands and a disgrace to present another angel with your back.

Castiel knew all the Postures and Arrangements just as any angel did and none of them were similar to this, wrapping his arms around Dean Winchester and enclosing the human in the span of his wings. Dominating and at the same time Submissive for he bowed his head and tucked his brow to the physical fingertips against the human’s throat.

He was baring the Openness of the crown of his head to a HUMAN! The most vulnerable spot on any angel and he was presenting himself to Dean’s mercy.

0-0-0

Dean looks up at him warily. “The rest?”

Zechariah leans back a little, hands folded on his stomach; “No more headaches, no more backaches. No more seizures.”

“He could do that?”

“He could wipe out those memories of Hell, Dean. Think about it, no more nightmares, no more of—of—“ He gestures to where Dean’s guts are starting to slide out of his body; “—Of THAT.”

Dean’s hands shake as he tries to hold his innards IN.

“You could have sex again, Dean… Satisfying sex, not like that pathetic display with Jamie, or that guy at the bar? Dean…” He shakes his head. “He could erase all that. He could make you whole again.”

Dean swallowed down a parched burning sensation in his throat; “Why? What’d I do to deserve a second chance? Why am I any different than any of the other souls down there? What makes me so special?”

Zechariah smiles sadly; “Don’t you just want it to be over? Don’t you deserve a little bit of peace, Dean?”

_Dean…_

_Dean._

**_Please, Dean… Please, wake up._ **

**_Please wake up… I—_ **

His mouth opens to speak, eyes locked on Zechariah, a weight in his limbs like every soul he’d tortured was hanging off him, dragging him down, “I—“

0-0-0

**Please, Dean… Please, wake up.** It should have felt like a betrayal of everything he had known, but this decision felt like it had been destined to happen from the beginning, like it was INTENDED to happen and Castiel couldn’t deny it; **I—I choose you.**

0-0-0

HOT!!

JESUS CHRIST!

Dean slaps a hand to his chest, eyes wide in fear and shock and sees flames so hot they’re WHITE burning between his fingers. He squeezes it, tries to snuff the flames out and hears Zechariah shouting. He looks up in shock sees a sudden blinding EMENSITY wreathed in colorless fire and six hands reaching toward him—

Six… Six.

Wait, why isn’t he praying?

Dean feels yanked backward through space by that single point of HEAT against his chest. The Beautiful Room giving way to Blackness like the midnight sky. Dean is enveloped in it, sheltered, it feels familiar—so—so familiar.

He wakes up in an inferno to two eyes, blue like starlight and old denim BRIGHT and WARM and CAS!

Dean is wearing only one of Sam’s hoodies and his underwear. He’s wet and the blanket over him is on fire, the bed under him is on fire.

There is URGENCY coursing through his veins and a sick ache in his head but he ignores it. Launches up with a startled cry and watches as Castiel waves a hand, blows the door clean off its hinges. He sees Sputnik, a titanic blur of gold and green leap out the door with her tail in the air and her tongue lolling, barking happily and he feels the floor under his feet, feels the dirt of the path and turns his head, staring in awe of the GLOW of the world around him in the twilight.

There is LIFE and COLOR in everything and he sees Bobby standing there blazing like liquid copper with hints of gold and white at his edges and it’s one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.

“Dean!”

He sees a flash of BRIGHTNESS when he reaches out and takes the angel’s hand. He doesn’t know what’s happening, only that something in his chest leaps at the contact. Something feels FAMILIAR and it’s right there, it’s just right there but he can’t pull the memory forward.

And the world dissolves in a blur, distance passed in the expanse of one step, a thunder of giant wings and a glow under Castiel’s skin like glimpses of the galaxy in NASA photographs.

Endless and ageless and too large to be imagined but contained in something he can touch and hold and call his own.

0-0-0

Bobby Singer would understand precious little about what occurred next, only that as he was returning inside from fetching more books from his car he noticed something horrifying as he passed the bedroom window. The glass was blackened with soot and he could see the jump and flicker of flame beyond the glass.

Bobby bellowed, books spilling from his arms and he lunged toward the door, one hand shoving into his coat and pulling out his gun—the next second the door burst open and smoke rolled out, chased by tongues of flame. Dean’s skin was so pale as to be transparent, but his eyes were alight, so bright vivid green they were almost painful to look at. He was on his feet, half naked as he had been when Bobby had left him in the house not two minutes ago, bare feet sinking into the mud and leaving prints as he stumbled away, one hand clasped around that man—Castiel. He remembered him from the barn months ago.

Castiel the _Angel_ who was supposed to have been set against them.

He was practically glowing and for a moment Bobby thought maybe he could see those Colors Dean talked about sometimes. A weird flare like you got with old cameras pointing them at the sunset.

Then they were gone.

0-0-0

They land hard and Dean stumbles, two days without willful movement has stolen the strength from his limbs and he collapses in the floor of the hotel room he and Sam had shared before the demons… Before he’d been tricked.

Castiel bends and hefts him up, settles him in a chair and takes a step back chest heaving, eyes wide. “We have to hurry. We don’t have much time.”

Dean’s tongue is glued to the roof of his mouth; “What happened?”

“Sam is going to kill Lilith!”

Dean swallows; “And that’s bad?”

“Dean, Lilith is the last seal! If she dies, Lucifer walks free!”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	27. Fissure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Jessi who helped me figure out a wat to post chapters from my phone so i don't have to steal internet anymore!

Ilchester, Maryland has always been sacred. Mostly because that is where Lucifer struck when he fell. At the time it was the middle of an ocean with a few little islands off to the west, and there was a much larger land mass to the east.

Over the millennia there would come a saying from Lucifer’s Descent. “East of Eden”, as it would go. But no one would grasp its true meaning, important as it was.

There would be books written on the concept, songs and tales told, but it would boil down to one thing. A flash of light to the east of Eden and a rumble in the earth as its mouth opened to accept him.

This, perhaps is where the trouble began, because to get to hell, one must go through the earth. Must become solid and sullied and have that solidity stripped away. Like the states of matter. Vapor, solid and liquid. A never ending cycle.

Hell is a liquid place. Ever changing, always flowing. Nothing stays the same for long. It pulls down souls and melts them, changes them and sends them up again as something new and dangerous.

Hell is a place where nothing stays whole for long, it all mixes and mingles and you leave parts of yourself behind and take parts of It with you. Always spinning, like a giant whirlpool. Pulling in and in and devouring as a black hole swallows everything thrown its way.

At the core, the hungry mouth of Hell, is The Cage. It is inaccessible and most don’t believe it even exists, but sometimes… sometimes, you can hear a cry that freezes even molten demon blood and everything will still in fear of it. Like children playing loudly until their sleeping parent gives signs of waking, then hush.

Some believe with everything they have been twisted into, that Lucifer, their father, will Rise from his prison and set them free. They will set fire to the heavens and punish those who have hurt them and there will be peace. There will be vengeance.

Others believe Lucifer is a myth, refuse to accept him, or the stories. They torture for the sheer joy of torturing. They spread hatred for the pure joy of it. They, for all their faults, are just like humans in this respect. Refusing to believe what is right in front of them.

But, as Above, so Below. As Within, so Without. There is an archangel in the Cage in Hell and for the first time in eternities passed, he finds a mouthpiece through the shredded body of a nun. He finds hope in the voice of one of his sons.

Blood and ash and death had wrought him and Azazel had proven himself well. He had seen humanity, warped by their own hatred and fears and pain and changed them in his father’s stead, for he was a good son, a First Son and as such heeded his father’s word. He had become the shadow in the night humanity feared, had come to know the darkness Lucifer had sought out in men very well.

Unlike most, over time, Azazel did not lose his faith. It grew. It became monumental, overflowed his paltry, deformed grace and twisted it, burned it away over the ages until he blazed black and yellow and fouled virgins. Drove them mad through his blood and bade them commit atrocities, darkening their souls and tarnishing their purity irreparably. They rained down in hell and were destroyed. He touched their milky skin and kissed their ruby lips and poured hatred into their hearts like wine, fed deception and lies into them like sweet bread. He cut out their tongues and unmade them cell by cell and built them into his own image. Black eyed whores who prowled the land and tempted honest men to savagery and adultery and murder—and he laughed as they cut those men apart in hell.

Azazel listened to his true father’s voice and trembled in love and fear of him.

“Find me a child… a very special child.” 

0-0-0 

Ruby drove like there was nobody else on the road. She kept the engine going at least three-thousand RPM, tires eating up the road, windows down—wind rushing past like a hurricane radio blasting. 

Three AM there weren’t any police on the roads, especially on the stretches of interstate between state lines. It was a hard push, straight on ‘til morning, Peter Pan and all that bullshit. Sam sat with his face to the wind and a hand over his mouth watching the world spin by and only half listening to the shit on the radio. The engine didn’t sound the same. The difference between a Chevy and a Ford he supposed. It was too high pitched a whine. Too hitching a switch between gears. There was a squeak in the back end, probably a squealer on the breaks. 

Sam didn’t know much about cars, but he knew this one wasn’t the one he wanted to be in. It wasn’t RIGHT.

His phone buzzed in his hip pocket again but he ignored it. Couldn’t afford to answer and risk what the voice on the other end would tell him. He preferred to live in his own little world for the moment. A world where Dean was getting better and Sam was only hours away from saving the world.

It was a nice place, he preferred it to reality at the moment, so he ignored the phone and watched green signs flip past as Ruby swerved onto an OFF ramp and uphill. 

Ohio, Dayton if he wasn’t mistaken. Dad had parked them here one spring around Easter, one of the few times they stopped simply because there were no leads and there was a school that didn’t fuss too much about the Winchester boys’ records being such a mess. Dean had taken him to the park one Saturday while Dad had been doing odd jobs around town and they’d fed stale bread to ducks and traced the names and initials carved into the tires of a big canon with a filled barrel, climbed all over it and were generally little terrors. Sam remembered how Dean had tried to be tough like most twelve-year-olds do and chased the geese milling around on the grass until one had turned and come at him hissing with its head down and wings flapping, ready to flog him.

Sam remembered Dean had let out a prepubescent shriek, grabbed his hand and they’d run. Had found a Dairy Queen and got Dilly Bars. Sat on the curb outside the hotel room to eat them and Dad had brought home Chicken Nuggets from McDonalds and burgers for them to share.

It had been one of the few times Dad had seemed almost fatherly. Less of a drill sergeant. He’d worked a lot, just weird things. Cleaning gutters and fixing ladies cars. It was like that spring he’d actually tried to be normal. But then one night he’d come back bloody and they’d left without warning.

That’s how it always seemed to go, wasn’t it. It’s a dreary foggy morning, damp and cold enough that Sam leaves his jacket on, but warm enough that he feels like he may be able to go without it. He’s unwilling to try though, instead he and Ruby creep into the hospital and wait. Cindy McCellen is thin, young, beautiful with dark brown curly hair and big blue eyes. She’s sweet and kind and wouldn’t hurt a fly according to her coworkers. But that doesn’t stop the demon from burrowing into her and taking over, pushing a newborn off the unit toward the back where Cindy parked her Subaru before clocking in the night before. It wouldn’t do to have the cops looking for Cindy just yet, not until it’s too late to stop her.

It wouldn’t do to have the cops looking for Cindy just yet, not until it’s too late to stop her. So, the demon waits until the end of her shift to make its move. It’s ironic really that the caution is what caused her downfall. If the demon had moved earlier it would have completely missed Ruby and Sam, would have escaped unknowing of the ruin bearing down on her.

Sam speaks slowly, evenly, lifts a hand and curls his fingers, choking the breath in Cindy’s lungs, silencing her, loosening the muscles in her body until she could be stuffed easily into the trunk of Ruby’s car beneath a devil’s trap.

Silent and immobile the miles sped away under Ruby’s tires. Hours tick past and the demon watches the glowing second hand of Cindy’s watch. 

0-0-0

There are moments where Dean feels almost lucid, others where the world around him is too bright, too colorful and too fucking MUCH for him to handle. Those instances Dean feels like everything dissolves but the pain of it.

Everything grates on his nerves. His skin feels too sensitive, like when he’d had chicken pox and everything that touched him had just feel like fucking sandpaper, every noise bit through his head like a chainsaw and the light hurt his face—not just his eyes, his whole face. Burned like a goddamned lazer. But he hadn’t been able to lie down and wallow in his misery then, no, because Sammy was sick too and wanted to be cuddled. Sam had wanted Dean to make him soup and oatmeal baths and rub his back and Dean had just wanted to curl up and die. Maybe it was his own fault they’d been so bad, maybe it hadn’t been. Who cares. All Dean knows is that now it feels like every nerve has been set aflame and the very weight of the air is unpleasant.

Castiel paints symbols on the walls of the hotel room in his own blood, then waves his hand and makes them invisible. 

Dean sits there slumped in a chair unable to lift his head from his shoulder and watches. Focuses on breathing and not the chemical smell of the air. The angel looks flustered, wills his hands clean and paces back and forth rubbing his palms together.

Dean sees the night-sky-brightness of him all dimmed and dark in places like someone’s taken a cookie cutter to him. “Cas,” He swallows —has to try three times to get his throat to move correctly; “Cas, w’happen t’you?”

Castiel flinches and ignores his questions, drops into a crouch by Dean’s side and pushes a hand carefully over his head, “What did Zechariah say to you, Dean?”

His eyes flutter closed; “I dunno—“

“Just think, tell me what he said.” 

Dean sighs, knits his brows and tries to focus on the words. He remembers them being spoken, but can’t exactly recall the sounds of them. “I don’t know.” 

Castiel tries again, shuffles closer and fits two of his intangible hands on Dean’s chest. “Just try to remember. You don’t have to say anything, just remember—“

He feels it like a cool sheet over fevered skin. A wash of fluid like sensation across his mind—it feels fantastic, chases away the sick ache and disorientation. Makes thinking just a little easier. 

Dean inhales and lets it out in a sigh, finds himself pulling the memories of the beautiful room up and letting them play in his head. He can feel Castiel picking at them, like a kid picks up a toad and examines it. Castiel seems to cradle the memories and bend curiously over them.

He seems strangely relieved that Dean hadn’t had time to give Zechariah his response on the whole letting the Big Guy heal him.

Castiel fits one of his vessel’s hands against the back of Dean’s head, tilts it back into the cup of his palm and pushes IN with his grace.

Dean feels it, like the current in a river, it passes into THROUGH him in broad tendrils, poke and prod at the PAIN in his head, that PRESSURE and ease it away—

Dean shudders with it, fingers tightening on air, a gasp of surprise and relief and he sags against the angel’s hands, feels a little dizzy and pliant. Like all the strength in his body has bled out into nothingness.

He thinks he hears Castiel speaking a few times but everything is hazy, not quite real. He remembers nothing, knows nothing, just allows himself to exist in a limbo of sensation.

Castiel’s hands shift over him, trace the curve of his spine and the ridge of his shoulders, spreads his grace throughout Dean’s body finding injury and mending it. Knitting ribs and lacerated skin, smoothing away bruises and the lump on the back of Dean’s skull. Fits his palm to the man’s chest and fades the print of a demon’s hand until there is nothing left.

Dean is boneless, relaxed. His mind is rattled, thought, memory and sense restored slowly as Castiel’s grace works through him, opens atrophied blood vessels and sparks life back into brain cells.

It’s taxing. Castiel pushes through it, makes sure each one is on its way to perfect working order. He encounters scar tissue in Dean’s head, tries to smooth his grace over it but it resists.

Zechariah’s grace is wrapped around it, preventing its erasure. Castiel isn’t strong enough to mend this hurt, as much as it pains him to leave it knowing what it means. He tries again anyway and pulls back quickly when Dean whines in pain.

He crouches there for a long while, passing his palms, both ethereal and physical, over Dean’s back and head, ventures as low as his hips for a moment but doesn’t linger. It’s a delicate process healing Dean. If he presses too hard with his grace Dean’s will react defensively and fight against him. He has to go slowly until Dean accepts what he’s doing. It’s not likely to happen while the human is barely conscious, but it’s possible so he doesn’t relent.

Once or twice Dean murmurs indistinctly, head leaned forward into Castiel’s shoulder, breath warm and shallow against his throat. Images flash through his head, violent and colorful and sudden like lightning in a midnight storm.

Castiel worries what will happen when the sigils he’s drawn on the walls aren’t enough. What will happen when he and Dean have to move? Heaven is abuzz with excitement, Castiel can’t make out the voices but the feeling is there.

Urgent, preparation.

The Archangels are mobilizing. Readying for battle. Castiel can feel the collective grace of the host shifting and readying itself for the coming battle.

Dean whimpers and Castiel tries to soothe him, tries to keep him awake so Zechariah can’t invade his head but it’s so difficult. Dean may have spent the past two days comatose but his body is still exhausted. Craves sleep. He has spent the past two days reliving Hell and his mind cries out for mercy, for peace.

“We have to stop Sam,” He says, speaks into the hair at the side of Dean’s head, “You have to stay awake.”

Dean says his brother’s name, struggles minutely and settles again. After a moment his struggles resume and he pushes away rubs his eyes with a shaking hand; “Phone… phone, I—I have to call him.”

Castiel nods looks around and goes to the bedside table, picks up the phone and pulls it over, sits it on Dean’s knees and watches as he punches in the number and holds the receiver to his ear. It rings a few times and goes to voice mail.

“Sam?” He wets his lips and breathes in; “I—I can’t really think right now. My head’s all fuzzy, but Cas says you—“ He hesitates, shakes his head to clear it; “You can’t kill Lilith. She’s not gonna break the last seal, Sam. She IS the last seal and you can’t kill her.”

The phone line crackles in his ear but Dean hears something beneath it, a hiss of a voice and he slams the phone back down and pushes it off his lap with a startled shiver; “They’re listening—They—FUCK, Cas!”

Castiel picks up the phone and holds it to his ear, listens to the white noise on the other end for all of two seconds, then turns and yanks the cord clean out of the wall. He stands there a moment, seeming to fill the room and lifts his fingers at Dean; “Stay here… Don’t go to sleep,” Then he’s gone in a whirlwind, like a sudden breeze came along and swallowed him, kind of like watching a distant house disappear in the rain only much quicker.

Dean pushes himself up and stands on trembling legs with his arms out to his sides for balance. He moves forward cautiously, hooks his duffle bag and drags it with him to the bathroom. He hunches over the sink and turns on the faucet, wets his palms and presses them to his face trying to chase away that cottony feeling in his head. He runs the water cold and presses chilled fingertips to closed eyelids trying to ease the BURN along his optic nerves and the growing BRIGHTNESS around him.

Dean feels Castiel before he sees him. Like that tingle in your skin before lightning strikes or before a hand drops onto your shoulder in the dark.

Castiel calls his name when he lands and Dean answers; “In here.”

The color of him is overwhelming when he pushes open the bathroom door and Dean tries shutting his eyes but it doesn’t help. He can see it through his lids, feel it in his skin.

“Castiel, man—dial it back a few, please. My head’s killing me.”

Castiel steps closer and it seems to fade away, leaves nothing but an electric tingle in Dean’s skin. “I can’t find Sam.”

“What do you mean you can’t find him?” Dean speaks more to the bowl of the sink than the angel, can’t quite lift his head.

“He’s being shielded from me. Zechariah wants this to happen, Dean. You understand this, correct?”

“He wasn’t praying.”

“I don’t understand?”

Dean swallows; “You told me you guys have six hands, two of them inside just for praying, right?”

“Yes.” 

“Well, Zechariah came at me with all six of them… He wasn’t praying.” 

Castiel is quiet for a moment, considering this. “Perhaps you were mistaken—“

“Nope,” He pats a wet hand on his shoulder halfway to his neck; “They were smaller, came out here. Like they folded out of his neck.” 

Castiel stares at him, he can feel it like a heated point on the side of his head.

“You guys look weird… Thought you were supposed to be pretty.” 

“Human aesthetics mean nothing,” He crouches and wrenches open Dean’s bag, starts pawing through it, “He lied to us. He liked to ME. To EVERYONE… Zechariah wants the apocalypse to happen, Dean. HEAVEN wants this to happen and unless we can find Sam we have no chance of stopping it.”

“Don’t you know where it’s gonna happen? I thought angels were all knowing?” 

“No, we’re not.”

Dean sighed and wet his palms again, pressed them to the back of his neck and focused on breathing. “What’re we gonna do?” 

"Find out where Sam’s going.” 

"How?”

“Leave that to me,” He’s tossing things around now, shakes out a pair of jeans and shoves them toward Dean; “Put these on, we have to hurry.”

Dean pushes himself up and squints down at him, takes the jeans and pulls them carefully over his legs, has to lean against the wall to keep from falling over. Castiel holds up a pair of socks and Dean takes those as well, sits on the toilet seat and pulls them on, “I thought Zech said that you couldn’t heal me.”

“I can’t. Not all of it.”

“So I’m gonna be like this forever?”

"No."

“I had a stroke, how am I up and walkin’ around? I was dying.”

“You had an aneurism the size of a golf ball putting pressure on your spinal cord, it shut off blood to parts of your brain and rendered you comatose. If I hadn’t eased the pressure when I did you likely would have been brain dead by noon tomorrow. I doubt Zechariah would have let it progress that far, but he has been unpredictable of late. He would have come to you in a dream state and offered an ultimatum.”

“He said I was going back to Hell.”

Castiel says nothing.

“How many angels died trying to pull me out, Cas?” 

Castiel looks up at him, brows pulled down, lips compressed; “Why are you calling me that?”

Dean blinks slowly, confused. He hadn’t even realized he’d been doing it. He knew he’d not done it before, perhaps once or twice when his brain was otherwise occupied and he couldn’t force the difference between the angel and His Cas to the forefront of his mind, but something felt different now, the distinction between the two was… was different. He remembered something, he could FEEL it. It was JUST THERE, fuzzy and indistinct like when he would forget the names for things or certain words and just stand there for a while snapping his fingers and making hollow dull sounds in his throat trying to recall it. Frustrating wasn’t a strong enough word.

ut there was something. Colors and images danced dizzily behind his eyes and he leaned backward away from them. Hands out and flattened on the wall to hold himself steady, to keep his center of gravity because it felt oddly enough, like he was strapped into a gyroscope, spinning every which way at once. Everything grew increasingly bright and his ears rang so loud all other sound was drowned out.

He came back to himself a moment later. It couldn’t have been any more than a few seconds, but Castiel was pressed in close, so BRIGHT despite his proximity, human hands to Dean’s shoulders, intangible ones on his face and wrists.

Dean felt caged in, trapped—and shoved the angel away with a weak snarl.

Castiel released him, rocked back on his heels and pressed his lips together; “We need to go. Are you ready?”

Dean swallowed, tried to draw some form of moisture back into his mouth and exhaled at the heavens, blinking a stinging gritty feeling from his eyes.

“Yeah… Yeah, I’m ready.” 

0-0-0

Sam stood over the table where the nurse was laid out and watched the beat of her pulse in her neck. Smelled the sweetspicyBURN of demonic blood in her veins.

Funny, how this had ended up. How it had come to this even if he had hoped it wouldn’t. “She knows where Lilith is?”

Ruby nods.

There is a determination in him. Cold, efficient. A ruthlessness that strangely enough does not seem at odds at all with his usual concern. 

Sam Winchester has reached his Point of no Return. He has found his lowest low and highest high, his weakness and strength and as much as Ruby had wished it were her, she was not surprised it turned out to be Dean. Sam and Dean had an abnormal obsession with one another, codependence was a pale and insufficient word considering how wrapped up in one another they were. But perhaps it was for the best. Sam would understand. He knew a taste of it already.

Sam had been wronged, cheated, spurned and thought a monster most of his life. He had been mistreated and belittled, thirsted for revenge and got none. He KNEW what it was like to be so slighted and ignored by the ones he had once looked up to, he would understand Ruby’s plight, understand Lucifer’s if only he would take the time to listen.

But they had no time. Sam would not have listened if Dean had anything to say about it. He would have pushed and pushed and MADE Sam see his side of things. He would have lied and cheated and manipulated until Sam doubted himself, doubted everyone but Dean.

Maybe it was a good thing Dean had been attacked. Maybe it was for the best that they had to do this the way Ruby had planned from the beginning. Maybe this could still work out in her favor, even if she was taking the risk of damaging Sam’s body irreparably. This way was more dangerous, not as clean as a grace weapon could have been, but it would have to do. It was their only choice now

Sam would understand. He would. He would understand and accept it after Ruby had the chance to talk to him, after the deed was done and they could get past the human stigma of it. He would understand and forgive her for lying because that’s what humans did. They were so forgiving, so accepting. Everything would be better in the morning.

Sam set upon the nurse without hesitation. Choked the information out of the demon inside her and went outside to throw up. It really had been too long since he’d ‘charged his batteries’ and they didn’t have much time left to coddle him through it.

Sam understands what they have to do, doesn’t like it, hates it even more when the demon bitch lets Cindy out and hides in the back to let the woman’s screams and cries and pleas for mercy wear away Sam’s resolve.

In the end, two miles from Saint Mary’s it’s Ruby who has to do it. Sam’s hands are shaking too badly.

Sam kills her, demon and all with a curl of his hand and they leave Cindy’s body by the side of the road halfway covered in broken brambles and weeds. Sam wonders if this means something, or if it means nothing at all in the larger scheme of things.

Will his murder of this innocent woman MEAN anything. Would Dean have done it? Or would he have found another way.

There are two messages from Bobby on his phone. Sam listens to the first, hears the fear growing in Bobby’s voice as he details Dean’s latest seizure, that his right pupil has blown out and his temperature dropped a few degrees.

Sam hears only the first two words of the second message, a few hours newer than the one before, the tone of Bobby’s voice and he throws his phone into the faded chipped sign with a snarl of pain; “Sam… Sam, he—“

Ruby says his name a few times, curls her fists into his hair and pulls him down, butts their brows together until he’s focused, chin aquiver, frightened and heartbroken because that tone—Jesus CHRIST that TONE.

It was the sad, resigned tone of someone reporting a death and Sam can’t take it, he can’t. Just CAN’T!

“It’s OK,” Ruby says, low and hushed. “It’s OK. It’ll be over soon…” She coaches him to breathe and proffers the milk-jug of blood. “Do it for him… Do it for Dean.”

She’s mixed it with scotch and it burns in a way that isn’t purely sulfuric as it goes down his throat, but the taste is the same. Something he equates with Worcestershire sauce and tequila. Bloody Marys’ on Tuesday Nights with Jess before they started dating.

He drinks it, chugs really, hoping the alcohol deadens his nerves, hoping it numbs him for whatever change is about to take place because he doesn’t want to know when it happens. Doesn’t want to know when he ceases to be Sam Winchester and becomes some monster in stolen skin. He doesn’t want to know when he is no longer Dean’s brother. He closes his eyes and hopes only for a peaceful oblivion.

It was a fool’s hope.

The world rushes into sharp alien focus with a roaring like children screaming in his ears and a burning chill that works from the inside of him out. He can FEEL everything, can wrap his hands in the power of the earth like his fist in Ruby’s hair and pull it—Draw it back on the fragile spindle of its neck and bend it to his will.

He is POWER.   
He is ENERGY.   
He is INVINCIBLE.

Ruby’s eyes are wary and she’s touching his face. He can almost see the shape of her beneath her thin human skin. Something small and twisted and scarred with big eyes that are almost too human to be demonic.

Obsession goes both ways, she’d said and Sam feels so powerful at the moment he wonders if he can pull the demon right out of Ruby and leave the human she had once been. Wonders if she would love him for it and help ease the HURT inside him that has no name but a shape like his brother.

He reaches out and fits his hand to her cheek, brushes away a stream of moisture that drips from her eyes and says “Hush,” in a voice that doesn’t sound like his own.

Ruby hushes, shudders at the contact of him and reaches after him as he turns.

0-0-0

Anna HEARD Zechariah’s shout of rage when Dean Winchester was stripped from him. Felt it through her core like an electric charge.

Castiel.

He had disobeyed—more than that. He had pulled Dean away from whatever edge he’d been perched on with Zechariah’s interrogation and HEALED him. Had disobeyed heaven and made a choice of his own. He was going to Help the Winchesters stop the apocalypse. Go against the Divine Plan.

Anna moved swiftly, grace tucked down deep, hidden. She knew they would be more focused on Castiel than anyone else, even herself, but that didn’t mean she could flaunt her presence. If anything, it meant she had to be doubly careful.

She could not find Castiel, nor could she find Dean when she looked for them. The last place Dean had been was burning and she stretched out her senses to watch the building collapse in on itself from the heat and intensity of the flame.

It was like a beacon. A fire ignited by grace so powerful she feared at first that an Archangel had descended and obliterated Dean and Castiel all together. But there was no residual hint of death in the air… quite the opposite. Anna pulled back to herself before she could be noticed by the other angels flocking to the area, she diminished herself, hidden and quiet in Maine. Retreated back to the ocean and waited, hoped Dean and Castiel would show themselves, just for a moment so she could find them, could tell them what she had heard. Heaven was abuzz with it, a notice stretching out to the farthest reaches declaring Castiel Removed. Thrown Down.

Anna felt the severance as the others removed Castiel’s name from their tongues and thoughts, cut him away from the fold like a cancer. She vaguely heard Castiel cry out into the void he found himself surrounded by, shocked. But he silenced himself quickly, so quickly Anna had been unable to pinpoint his location—hoped desperately no other angel had been able to figure out where he was hiding.

 

The Host would be watching him, waiting for someone, some angel to make contact, then they would pounce. It was unsafe to try and communicate with Castiel. Prayer between angels could be overheard when they were separated by such a distance. It was not safe to attempt, she would have to find him and tell them what the others were saying. Find Dean and tell him, face to face, what Zechariah was planning to do to his brother.It made sense now, the grace she had tasted in the air at the back of that bar. Zechariah, or one of his subordinates. They knew Sam’s phone numbers, knew Dean’s as well. It wasn’t too farfetched to assume there was an angel following Sam and Ruby at that very moment running interference, making sure nobody got close enough to stop what had been set into motion.

Anna felt blinded for the first time since regaining her grace. Anna had acted not as an angel should, but as a human. She had allowed Sam to go away with Ruby and now it was too late to stop him.

Zechariah was raging, flying low in zigzag patterns searching for any sign of Dean and Castiel. In Heaven, the Archangels were restless. Scratching at the walls and blazing their grace at any who dared look upon them.

Anna imagined them with great terrible faces and gnashed teeth even if angels had no teeth, no mouths. She had been so influenced by humanity she put human like features on the images in her head. Even her own countenance was altered by her will. A mouth and fingernails, a nose and tongue.

An angel with human features, hidden and listening while her brethren clamored for a fight. Plucked stars from the sky and threw them in their anger and impatience.

Anna breathed in and out, let herself melt back and stretched herself THIN across the map. She had to find them before Zechariah. Had to find them before the Archangels could descend and obliterate them. It was impossible for one of her status to outrun a seraph. Impossible that she might win against an Archangel, but Anna had kept part of her stubborn human nature and she ground her teeth and tried anyway. Convinced herself that yes. It was possible. She could—she WOULD.

Think, Anna. Think. Where would they go? Where would they go to find answers? Who knows where Sam and Ruby are? Who would—She MOVED—and the world moved with her.

0-0-0

It moves through him like an electric shock, or like a punch to the chest. Dean doesn’t feel like he’s moving more as sliding. Kind of similar to slipping on ice, unsure if you’re going to fall or retain your footing.

Castiel is at once man sized and colossal at his side, taking a single step forward through brightness and swirls of sound that’s so thick it’s practically a physical thing.

The next thing Dean knows, he’s standing in a dirty kitchen staring at the back of a man’s head.

Dean knows who it is immediately, it’s the man’s color, spiky and close to his body like a hedgehog, flickering and dull; “Lady, sometimes you gotta live like there’s no tomorrow—“

Chuck turns and for an instant confusion flashes across his face, then his nose wrinkles up and his shoulders pull up and back defensively; “Wait —this isn’t supposed to happen,” He flinches visibly and turns back to the phone he’s got halfway clutched to his ear; “No, lady, this is definitely supposed to happen!” He chuckles nervously and wags a finger at Dean and Castiel, eyes locked on them and flung wide in something akin to fear; “But I just gotta call you back.”

Dean glances around the room, dazed. Everything is so bright and it’s almost dancing. A slow waltz maybe, he’s not sure exactly.

Chuck slams the phone down in its cradle and thrusts a finger at them; “You’re not supposed to be here!” His lips pull back from his teeth and his eyes flick to Dean, wide and feverish; “You’re supposed to be comatose!”

Dean blinks at him, rubs a hand over his face and opens his mouth to speak but Chuck moves first, seems to just teleport forward without moving his legs. His palms are sweaty and his breath smells like Cheetos and beer.

If Dean had been in full possession of his faculties he would have shoved Chuck away, as it was his mind hadn’t quite caught up with his body so he just stood there and endured the shivering grip Chuck had on his skull.

Castiel said something and Chuck nodded, turned and stumbled against the edge of the kitchen table as he made for a stack of papers still slowly filing out of his printer. He snatched them up and shoved them at Dean. Dean closed his eyes and gave his body a little shake, then took the stack of pages and squinted at the text. “Saint Mary’s?” He looked up, unsure; “What is that? A convent?”

Chuck nodded, fingers laced together and flexing excitedly; “Yeah. But, you guys aren’t supposed to be there. You’re supposed to still be comatose, see?” He indicated a few passages pages ahead; “You’re supposed to be bargaining with Zechariah,” He turned to Castiel, “And you’re supposed to be in heaven being ‘Debriefed’,” He flicked his fingers into quotation marks.

Dean didn’t like the way Castiel’s color shrank in on itself, or that his intangible hands folded in and seemed to wrap around himself, as if trying to hide those dark empty spaces where his color had been burned away.

“You two aren’t in this story! You don’t belong —” Chuck waved his hands at waist height in warning or dismissal but Dean was focused on the pages in front of him, the weird pressure growing in his chest, the tingle in his follicles as every hair on his body stood at attention.

It happened in a matter of seconds, a great RUSH into the room like a bomb had gone off. Chuck let out a startled yelp as a she moved past him and Castiel’s head lifted in surprise, eyebrows raised. It’s probably the most expressive Dean had seen him in a while.

“Anna?” Castiel’s voice is remorseful and surprised in the same instant.

She looks different-- seems to GLOW from within, her eyes blazing like distant flame on low cloud cover; “You have to leave. NOW—“

The lights flickered and Chuck’s computer monitor began whining. 

Dean’s head lifted and he heard a buzzing noise, sharp and growing in intensity, LIGHT growing outside the windows. It reminded him of the beginning of a song by Rush, the synthesizer revving up, but this wasn’t something created in a studio, this was actually happening.

Something was coming—

And Dean remembered Lilith, remembered the first time he’d met Chuck. Remembered Castiel’s carefully chosen words whispered between surreptitious glances at the heavens. He remembered the feeling of Castiel’s lips against his own—fleeting, hesitant—An electric shock of sensation and thought and surprise.

“The archangel—“ Dean felt the words leave his mouth and take the strength in his bones with it.

Anna’s voice rises, eyes alight, body glowing brighter and brighter, there is a white shard of POWER in her hand suddenly and it BURNS with silver flame—“GO!

Castiel’s mouth opens to argue but Anna bares her teeth at him and she presses her hands flat to his chest and shoves him bodily backward.

"GO!"

Dean’s hand lifts and three fingers hook into Castiel’s palm, a slight twitch of his wrist and that’s all it took.

Castiel’s shoulders sagged and he turned, eyes wide and somehow pained, jaw set. His hands were warm, one loose and easy gripping Dean’s own, the others wrapping around him and—It was not a seamless movement. Not like shifting through space from the hotel to Chuck’s house had been. Dean stumbled, feet finding the ground was still shifting but the angel was merciless, pulled him forward.

They were in a hallway. Dark and dirty with vines growing in through broken windows. There was a smell, thick and dank and sulfurous and the whole place BLAZED with a weird mixture of COLOR and BLACKNESS.

Dean moved forward, tightening his grip on Castiel’s hand pulling because he could hear laughter—a demon’s voice pulled high and amused on pain and relief—

It’s not a long hallway, but it’s littered with bodies and a stink like rotting meat and sulfur. The demons are all dead, burned out neatly—cleanly. The bodies pristine save the lingering stink of demonic influence.

And at the end of the hallway is Sam. Dean sees him, but at the same moment, doesn’t.

The room is filled with blackness, it crawls along the walls and drips like ectoplasm. All around Sam there is a broad thick corona of energy that claws and eats at the blackness.

There is no red left.

Lilith is pinned back against the altar and Dean doesn’t really see the dental hygienist she’s wearing, he sees the twisted pale monstrosity that is truly her. At one time, perhaps when she had been human, she had been beautiful. There was still evidence of it because her face was seemingly unmarred but for a glowing WHITE mark on her forehead and marks like handprints ringing her neck. Below that point she was no longer what one would call human-like. Twisted and monstrous, limbs too thin, too long, all sharp cutting edges and claws made for tearing. Her stomach was sagging and hollow and empty. A hungry void between her legs waiting and aching to be filled.

Lilith was, after all, a mother. The Mother of Demons if what Dean remembered Alistair hissing in his ear was correct. Through her was born Damnation.

Her eyes were wide, staring—they flicked from Sam’s face to Dean’s and rage flashed across her features, pulling them taut and back like a cat hissing, mouth opening wider and wider and wider, a gaping maw of jagged shark like teeth, the black hole of her throat lit from within by hellfire—

And then there was Ruby.

She was a small demon, child like. Skin burned and cut, chunks missing where claws and teeth had torn through… But her eyes. Though those of the body she’d stolen were black, those of the demon she was were not. They were bloodshot and all too human. The grin that split her face was not and with a wave of her hand the heavy oak doors of the chapel slammed closed.

Dean’s fists were pounding on the wood before he even knew what he was doing. Before he was even aware of moving. Castiel was at his side, hands ALIGHT with grace, pressed to the wood and BURNING even as tendrils of blackness stretched out through the cracks and stabbed at him like Ahab’s crew after The Whale.

Castiel’s mouth moved and Dean became aware of a noise—a shrieking howl of a noise—Lilith was laughing.

Dean shouted his brother’s name, fighting to break through the barrier, desperate to get through to Sam in any way possible. The earth rocked and cracked and bucked beneath them like an earthquake and Dean pressed his hands to the door, met Castiel’s eyes and PUSHED.

He expected it to hurt—expected that lacerating pain to slide back into his skull, but it didn’t come. Instead there was a rush inside him. A relief of sorts, like when a cramped muscle relaxed, or he finally twisted enough and his spine popped like a xylophone. It came up from that spot in his chest flowed through him and OUT—

The force of it physically knocked him back and he fell, slid into the wall surprised and struggled to his feet again, planted his feet shoulder width apart and leaned into the door PUSHED again and watched in awe as his hands seemed to light up from within. It wasn’t bright by any means, just a weird glow and he could see the veins in his skin, see the dark outlines of his bones. The wood under his fingers smoked and charred like when a match or a cigarette is snuffed out on a park bench.

The rumble in the earth built and built to a terrible crescendo and the floor gave a sharp POP and cracked under Castiel’s feet, split right under the door and suddenly the blackness receded and the door crumbled like cinders. Dean’s swung open and he launched himself forward, grabbed Sam around the chest and tackled him to the ground—

Lilith was panting, blood running freely from her mouth, nose, ears and eyes. Her dress was stained and the stolen body of the hygienist was convulsing even as she cackled wetly. Eyes wide and feverish and white with smears of red from the internal bleeding.

Dean snarled at her, tangled his fingers in Sam’s shirt—“DON’T!”

Lilith’s hand twitched. Just a twitch, elegant. Like she was shooing a fly. Just a flick of her wrist and Dean was air born.

It felt like a hand, too long, sharp and cold—the cold of it pierced skin and muscle and ate down to the bone like acid. Wrapped around his throat and SQUEEZING.

Dean saw his legs dangling in dead air some twelve feet or more above the ground. Pinned to the stone of the chapel wall amid a mad tangle of spider webs and mildewed rat’s nests.

Castiel had a sliver of brightness in his hand. It looked like he’d cut away part of the moon. Where Anna’s blade had been pure silvery whiteness, Castiel’s glowed faintly blue and the flame around it was tinged in green. He brandished it and threw out a hand— Pined Ruby to the far wall and turned his head to regard Sam; “You must not kill her!”

Lilith’s mouth pulled farther back, like a crocodile and snapped open, hand lifting and twisting as it pushed forward in the air. She shouted something, Dean didn’t know what language it was, but it HURT his ears even as he struggled, clawing at whatever force was wrapped around his throat choking the life from him.

It was the strangest thing, Castiel’s blade shot from his hand and he was thrown backward as well, colliding with the wall hard enough to leave a crater in the stone.

Lilith snarled and swiped her hand through the air toward the glowing blade, her fingers curled and opened again wide, splayed out with her index finger pointed toward the angel.

And Dean watched silent—choked and unable to scream—as the knife launched itself back toward Castiel point first and slid to the hilt high in the left side of his chest.

From the angle Dean couldn’t tell if it had pierced his heart or embedded itself more toward his shoulder. Lilith’s hand was shaking and the dark stuttering curl of her color dimmed a little more as she turned back to him, white eyes watering.

Ruby was screaming. Dean couldn’t make out the words over the rush of blood in his ears but he saw Sam pushing up to his knees, eyes wide and horrified, locked on Dean.

“Pathetic, isn’t he,” Lilith’s Voice was many voices. Childish laughter and the low rumble of a volcano. Power and Innocence and Deceit and HATRED so pure it felt like love; “How should I do it? Pull him limb from limb?” Tendrils wrapped around Dean’s wrists and ankles, PULLED until his joints popped and ached. “Or maybe I should see what’s going on inside?”

One finger twitched, left to right and Dean felt a cold strike like a knife across his stomach. It wasn’t deep, not like Azazel had done. This was just for show, Dean could see how Lilith was shaking, barely holding together. She was goading Sam.

And it was working

Dean bared his teeth and met Sam’s eyes, shook his head and tried to will his brother to understand him, to HEAR him.

It’s a trick. Sammy, it’s a trick!

“I remember he was always so soft and red inside. Even when Alistair was fucking him to death for the thousandth time he was always so tender and NEW inside. He always bled so pretty,” Lilith laughed, “He never told you I was there, did he. Never told you how I liked to watch… A mother always dotes on her child’s creations and He made such ART with Dean, Sam. Even when he wasn’t wearing Dear Sweet Cas’ face. Isn’t that right?” She giggled, “Oh, did I tell a secret?”

She smiled with her red bloody teeth and Dean saw it all flashing in his head like a strobe light, like an electrical storm. Images pasted together off the cutting room floor. Stretched out on the rack or pinned beneath the demon in one of his many forms.

“You always gave your best for Daddy, didn’t you Dean… Always gave it up for little Sammy —”

Sam makes a noise in his chest. Something like a scream, something like a roar. All pain and hate and rage and sorrow and for a moment Dean sees nothing, clenches his eyes closed and pretends it’s not happening because this—this can’t be real, this is something from Hell.

And in his head that’s what he sees. That’s all he knows. The dozens—HUNDREDS of times he had been inned and unable to move, watching the Hell Version of Sam tear someone apart before he turns and rips into Dean with tears on his cheeks; ‘Why? Why’d you do it, Dean? Why’d you leave me! Why’d you let me become this THING!’

And every time it was the same answer; I’m sorry. Sam, I’m so sorry.

But ‘Sorry’ was never good enough. It never MEANT anything and he always had to show it, always had to PROVE how sorry he was because Dad had always said ‘Take care of Sammy’, ‘look out for your brother’. So Dean had, he’d done it all for Sam—

He hits the ground hard and far away across the fields he hears a noise, maybe a bell and for a moment he hears music in his head. Remembers driving, Sam in the passenger seat, the road stretched out infinitely in front of them, golden green wheat fields on either side of them. Nebraska, Oklahoma, fuck knows. They’ve got the windows down, it’s hot, the radio’s playing. Sam’s eating a Snickers Bar and looking at a map, laughing carefree and guiltless.

Pink Floyd’s on the radio and Dean has a sunburn but he doesn’t care. Nothing matters.

Thunder rolls and all the glory fades and Dean is shivering against a dirty cold floor in a growing pool of his own blood. He pries his eyes open, sees a dead demon slumped against a church altar and Sam standing over her panting, shivering.

None of it matters, does it. None of it. It’s all over—

“You don’t even know how hard this was. All the demons out for my head. And no one knew. I was the best of those sons of bitches! The most loyal not even Alistair knew! Only Lilith!” She pawed at him, face streaked with tears and lit from within with a strange hellish joy; “Yeah, I’m sure you’re a little mad right now, but I mean, come on, Sam. Even you have to admit I’m awesome!”

Sam turns and looks at her, shakes his head. Lifts a hand and curls his fingers like he’s breaking a twig off a tree limb.

She doesn’t so much as twitch. “Yeah… You kind of shot your pay load on the boss, Sammy. Sorry.”

He staggers leans heavily against a wall and slides down, pale and shivering; “The blood—you poisoned me.”

Ruby shakes her head, turns and tiptoes around the spiraling pattern of blood on the ground; “No. It wasn’t the blood. It was you. You and your choices. I just gave you the options—I have to admit I was a little worried there for a while. The whole Dean and his Grace deal, but I guess I wasn’t the only one opposed to the idea… I guess Heaven didn’t want him using their God Bullets against them,” She pauses in front of Castiel and stares up at him with her nose wrinkled up, watches his blood trickle out from around the blade and down the wall behind him. “Not such a scary bug when you’re pinned to the wall, are you.”

Castiel is shivering, watching the blood tracing out a wheel on the floor, the demonic energy leeching out into complex symbols invisible to the human eye. He can’t see them, but he knows them, can feel them even as his grace bleeds out.

Ruby turns and regards Dean where he’s trying to get his hands and knees under him. “I know this is hard to believe right now, Sam… But this is a miracle, so long coming. Everything Azazel did and Lilith did just to get you here… And you were the only one who could do it.”

“Why? Why me?”

She smiles, tilts her head and looks at him like he’s her whole world. Like he’s her everything. The moon and stars and the sky they shine in; “Because, it had to be you, Sammy. It always had to be you… You saved us. You set him free and he’s gonna be grateful. He’s gonna repay you in ways that you can’t even imagine!”

Dean’s voice comes out slurred, cracked and barely audible; “Sam… Don’t listen to her.”

She snarls at him over her shoulder, steps close and flattens her palms on Sam’s face, pulls until his eyes meet hers; “It goes both ways, Sam! I know—I know you’re mad but you have to understand. They’ll kill us, they’ll kill us because we’re different, because were Demons. They don’t care why we are the way we are. They don’t see or care that they MADE us this way! They don’t care about all the shit we had to live through. They don’t see that we only did what we had to do because THEY wouldn’t help us. They don’t SEE that! They don’t see the suffering —and they want you to suffer, Sam. They want you to hurt, can’t you see that? All the times you’ve felt like a freak, all the times you’ve felt like a monster it’s been because of THEM. It’s ALL because of THEM… But now it’s over. Now they’re gonna pay—HE will MAKE them Pay, Sam. Every single one of them! They’re gonna pay for what they did to us. They’re gonna BURN for it.”

And then there is a hand on her shoulder yanking her back from Sam and the spiral of growing blood on the floor and Sam’s eyes snap to it just as the lines connect and bounce back like a pupil dilating, a shockwave and something like WIND that knocks Sam back into the wall. He only just manages to retain his footing before the world rocks violently beneath him and he sees Dean standing there in a dirty t-shirt, stained with blood, hands wrapped around Ruby’s throat and an expression of rage on his face.

Dean SQUEEZES—PUSHES and he sees the color of Ruby’s eyes eaten up by black, sees the demon truth of her clawing and scrambling to free itself. Skin burned raw and gray, vertebrae jagged points down the length of her, barbed wire wrapped around her waist like some sick corset, grown into her flesh in places like it was part of her.

Ruby’s mouth opened and the mouth of the body she was wearing followed suit. She screamed and the BLACKNESS of her ignited in a bright flash.

She collapsed lifeless to the floor and Dean’s lips pulled back from his teeth. He could see his hands in his peripheral vision, fingers curled like claws, fingers stained and caked with ash that sizzled and burned in the colorless flicker of himself.

Vaguely Dean is aware of Castiel, still pinned to the wall by his blade, is aware of Sam pulling at his clothes, but Dean feels something else. Feels a growing tingle under his skin, a charge working up from his feet to the top of his head. He wonders if he’s about to be struck by lightning but—

It’s like a sonic boom. A sudden supersonic SCREECH and Dean’s eardrums vibrate. He and Sam are knocked physically off their feet and into the corner, pinned there like insects. Dean slams his hands over his ears expecting to find blood on his palms like last time, but instead the sound grows and grows and goes higher and higher past the human range of hearing until it drowns out everything and the world around him is absolutely silent. He can feel the vibration of the sound through the earth, like the few times he’s gone into a nightclub and the subwoofers had been up full blast. It rattles his internal organs around and he becomes perfectly aware of all of them, of their placement and arrangement. Can feel their shapes jiggling around behind his ribs like jello.

Castiel’s mouth moves, pulls open on a sharp cry and he wrenches his blade free and falls into a heap on the floor, scrambles up to his hands and knees and moves toward them with his face scrunched up in something all too similar to agony, blood leaving a sticky red trail in his wake. There is light pouring out of the wound in his chest, Dean sees it like a sunlight through bullet holes into a dark room, can see how the edges of it eat away at Castiel’s color as the angel forces himself toward them, collapses heavy and solid and shivering across Dean’s legs and stares with wide denim blue eyes at the IMMENSITY emerging from the Cage, bloody hand reaching toward Sam, fingers in spasm.

Dean wants to vomit, the vibrations and NOISE is that strong, but there’s nothing in his stomach to bring back up so he chokes on air instead, sees Sam writhing in the floor above him, mouth open in a scream but the sound drowned out, hands clasped over his ears, curled in on himself.

And then the BRIGHTNESS shifts—explodes outward, bores back into his head with hungry BURNING intent. Dean sees WINGS. Sees HANDS—

—and everything goes black.


	28. The Acquisition of Faith and the Acclimation of Grace; A Primer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter monday if all goes well. Had to break this one in two because of the length.
> 
> Thanks Jessi for listening to me whine and for giving me the advice! *hugs*

It started as sudden noise in the blackness. An echoing cry of pain cut too short. A soft fizzling POP of bluewhite light, like lightning in a distant storm. Like liquid electricity.

Scurrying clawed feet.

Dean felt each little hair on his body lift, gooseflesh pebble his skin.

He’s sweating and it’s cold here. Humid but strangely cold, like the inside of a defrosting freezer. That’s what it smells like anyway, icy death slowly thawing.

He can’t move. He can feel everything, each bead of sweat each hair and tightened follicle, but he can’t move. It’s like sleep apnea. He can’t move or cry out but he is aware of everything, has to struggle to keep breathing because it feels like there’s something on his chest.

Something moves in the darkness and there is a sound a SCREECH of metal on metal, something large and heavy being shifted effortlessly aside. Like rusty damp hinges and nails on a chalkboard.

There’s another flicker, like sparks flying off a grinding wheel. Closer.

Something whimpers and there is a nasally, breathy sounding chuckle.

Dean feels himself speak, can’t control it, it comes from somewhere inside him and bubbles up in a voice too thin and tight, like violin strings; “Whosthere!”

There’s another sparking flash off to his left—larger, closer and he sees a darkened shape huge and monstrous, too many arms and a gaping maw—Laughter and when the flash happens again the shape is gone.

Scurrying, more whimpering. The exquisite sound of a knife finding flesh—once twice—againandagainandagainandagainandagain—grunts and muffled cries of agony then silence.

Dean gets the vague impression he’s in a room of some sort. Or maybe some kind of silo, a space round and made of metal and too tall to see the top of.

Something rattles above him and he feels the wind of something solid and large swing past his face. It’s wet and drips on him and he can smell the salty metallic tang of blood.

_Oh, Jesus… ohjesus—_

“Nope… He ain’t gonna help you,” The face looms out of the darkness at his side, elongated. Skeletal, snakelike with glowing, watery, crusty white eyes and teeth like daggers. “You’re all mine.”

It slithers over him, on top of him like a lover—crushing and wet and sticky from all the gore. Its breath is sour, like bad bathtub gin and rotting broccoli mixed with bile and too sweet coffee. There is fire glowing in its mouth, like light in the back of a cave. It burns brighter with every breath.

_Please—oh, please—_

Eight clawed hands walk up his sides, gentle and leaving a trail of sticky blood in their wake.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get to you. I have so much planned for you, Sweetheart. It’ll make what I did last time look like foreplay,” He chuckles and swipes his tongue out over his face, “This is the main event, Dean… You and your brother popped Lucifer’s cage. There’s no escape now. Game over. No more angels, no more earth. You had one chance and you blew it,” He chuckles, “We owe it all to you, Dean. Without you, none of this would have been possible—“

There is another flash, huge, like someone’s turned on lights at a football stadium. It blazes into fiery life high above him and Dean sees endless lengths of chain, hooks and writhing bodies dangling there, realizes that this place isn’t without light, there are just so many people—so many souls strung up above him that they block out the sun. They all stare with weeping, agonized eyes, mouths sewn shut, eyelids cut away. Swaying gently in a breeze like wind chimes.

The room around him is wet with their sweat, blood and tears. An endless rain of it washing over him.

The flash ends and the vision is burned into the backs of his eyes, every face, every single one.

Alistair smiles and cups his head gently, lifts him and presses a kiss to his brow. “Thank you,” He says with a sound like a sob of joy, “Thank you.”

0-0-0

Bobby Singer has never been what one would call easily surprised. He’s lived the majority of his adult life hunting and studying improbable things. One may not believe it by looking at him and the parts of his history that are publicly known, but he is a very intelligent man, an abstract thinker. He enjoys math and science and reading about ancient Sumerian river monsters or hunting ancient Sumerian river monsters in his spare time.

He likes candlelight dinners and long walks on the beach, go figure.

Bobby also speaks five languages fluently and over a dozen well enough to translate texts. He understands the modern marvel that is the smartphone, though he despises them and likes his John Wayne westerns on the Dee-Vee-Dee just like anybody else.

What Bobby Singer does NOT understand, however, is how that shotgun shack just WENT UP like that, or how Dean had been on his feet and running when Bobby was damned sure the kid was bleeding out inside his head.

He stood by his car thinking about it and sharing bologna sandwiches with the dog while they watched the fire burn down.

Sputnik, apparently, had the same philosophical questions he did. Where had the fire come from? Why had it burned so quickly? What did it MEAN?

She had her little head cocked to the side, crooked bottom tooth over her lip, new sweater warm and snug around her little body. She looked up when Bobby looked down at her and snorted her discontent.

_I got no idea._

Bobby sighed and fished his car keys out of his pocket; “Well shit.”

It wasn’t that Bobby or Sputnik were endowed with preternatural abilities that gave them a sixth sense, more as you just KNEW if you knew what you were waiting to feel.

Considering what had happened, a cold chill up one’s spine and a sharp ringing in the ears was paltry evidence of the great cataclysm of Lucifer’s Ascent, but that’s all that happened outside of the eastern seaboard.

Seismographs would pick up a tremor at exactly six minutes after midnight as far west as Idaho. By dawn the media would be flooded with images of flattened buildings in Ilchester. Earthquake, they’d call it, “Gas Main Explosion Kills Fourteen in Abandoned Convent”; Dozens of sudden and inexplicable natural disasters around the world; earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods.

Bobby knew better, the moment that otherworldly chill raced up his spine and his ears were filled with dull ringing noises he knew. Some part of him shivered, recoiled in denial of it, in fear. Some shrinking portion of him that remained of the boy with the God Fearing mother trembled at the idea that this was it. The world was at its end.

He no sooner had the chance to rub a hand over his face before there was a noise to his left and something heavy hit the trunk of his car.

Sputnik yapped excitedly and rushed over with her tail in the air and Bobby’s hand went to his revolver.

There was a pinprick of light, like a flashlight in the dark, pulsing and dim and almost liquid.

The light shifted and moved and Bobby saw a dark stain on the front of a man’s shirt, saw a pale face and wide blue eyes that seemed to glimmer a little from within.

Castiel looked up at him from the ground with sweat visible on his vessel’s brow, plunged two fingers into the glowing hole in his chest and began scrawling something messy in his own blood on the back fender of Bobby’s car.

Sputnik bounced at his side anxiously, tail tucked between her legs, she pushed in close and began lapping quickly at his face, trying to help, whining. But the angel ignored her, focused on his work. He finished the last lines and sagged against the ground boneless, gave a grunt of effort as he tried to push himself up again and went still.

Bobby moved cautiously, stared around and dropped into a crouch by the angel’s side, fitted both hands under his arms and hefted him up against his knees.

“Couldn’t,” Castiel’s voice was thin, a wet slur and his eyes wouldn’t stay open.

“Where are they?” Bobby shook him; “Where are the boys? Dammit, if they’re dead just tell me—“

Castiel shook his head and his lips pulled back from his teeth, bloody hands lifting and catching the closest part of Bobby he could, pulled him down by his ears and bumped their brows together, PUSHING the information forward in one quick thrust.

It knocked the hunter back and he flopped onto the ground spread eagle with little silvery specks floating in the edges of his vision. Dazed as he was he had the sense to push Sputnik away before she started licking his face. It took him a moment but he managed to push himself back into a sitting position, eyes wide, staring at the angel crumpled and bleeding on the ground.

It took longer than he wanted to admit to get Castiel into the car, the son of a bitch was heavy and Bobby wasn’t exactly a young man anymore. The angel’s eyes opened to slits every so often and his head flopped around to look at this or that with a confused, sightless expression.

The wound on his chest was still sluggishly bleeding but the light had thinned to a dim glow and by the time Bobby had padded gauze over it whatever was lit up inside of him seemed to have gone out or healed over or been concealed beneath the clotted blood.

The drive was slow, quiet. Just Sputnik’s grunts as she tried to get Castiel’s attention and affection, butting her head against his shins from the floor or pawing at his ankles desperately. But Castiel was motionless, slumped against the passenger door with one of Bobby’s coats over him like a blanket, for appearances sake lest anybody peer in at him on the road.

Bobby talked. Asked questions but didn’t expect answers. Complained, asked just what the hell Castiel thought he was doing just running around like that with a chest wound. Said it was probably a bad idea not swinging past a hospital but the last thing he needed was some damned quack askin’ about that weird light coming outta his chest.

“Grace…” Castiel’s voice was thin, barely a whisper. “She hit… scar tissue. Missed my core.”

Bobby snorted; “I’ve seen wounds like that kill a man before he knew he was hit. How are you still up and talkin’?”

Castiel peered at him sidelong; “I’m not a man.”

“Woman then—“

“I’m not a—“ He sighed, brows knit together; “I’m not _human._ I can’t be killed like one.”

Bobby grunted, bobbed his head. “So… Sam missed the bitch?”

“What?”

“Lilith opened the cage.”

Castiel’s eyes fell closed; “Her death was the key that opened it.”

0-0-0

Alistair is elbows deep in his chest cavity when it happens and Dean has screamed himself mute. Only gasping little grunts of breath left when his abdominal muscles and diaphragm convulse and force the sounds out.

It builds like a whine in the air, like a scream over distance. Like a defibrillator charging, higher and higher and higher until—

_Crack Pop— **SNAP**_

There is a splinter of the sky falling at him, black and blazing at the edges and the sound roars in, LIGHT roars in—SHATTERS the world and Dean can’t move, can’t breathe can’t think, there is only the brightness and crushing impossible pressure from all sides. The wind feels like sandblasting. It’s peeling his skin off cell by cell.

He opens his mouth and screams feels HANDS—burning and rough and peeling his flesh from his bones. Sees faces, strange faces and so much COLOR! It burns his eyes even though they’re shut.

Voices rise and fall in whispers and he feels them like thunder in his ears.

The sounds make no sense, he has no point of reference, he’s tumbling without direction end over end through a blinding abyss.

Then it’s Different. It’s no longer twisted memories, it’s Physical. It’s SOLID in a way the fluidity of Hell can never be. There is a voice, low and deep and it seems to swallow the other sound;

“Move—Sam, _MOVE!”_

Hands—cool, simple. Just hands. They fold over his ears and all the SOUND is gone. There is quiet, breathing—He gropes forward, unable to see and his fingers find solidity, taste cotton and laundry detergent and salt and flesh—a taste of something otherworldly like the air in winter or wind through glaciers. He is confused and digs his nails in. Find bruised flesh and blood—so much blood. Two fingers slip against wet flesh and one dips into a wound, feels gore and muscle and split skin—

His brain tells his hands to let go but they don’t listen, they cling all the tighter.

“What’s happening?” A voice. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Too much grace.”

“I was right there too, why am I not—“

“Your body isn’t acclimated to accept it, it bounced off of you… He drew it in.”

“Is he going to be OK?”

The voice is quieter, not as firm as it was a moment ago; “Some would call this Divine Ecstasy.”

“Doesn’t look like Ecstasy to me…”

The hands on his head slip free, slide away and a weight settles inelegantly along his side.

“Castiel?”

“Castiel…”

Movement, hands that feel too cold to be alive, that BURN—

“Shit—“

“Don’t… don’t leave the room… They’ll see. HE’LL see.”

“What is that—“

“Don’t leave the room.”

And that brief moment of respite is gone. SOUND and COLOR and BRIGHTNESS rush back in and Dean drowns in it. Hands come out of everywhere he can feel them, the ridges of every finger print, little bumps of scar tissue, the hard crests of fingernails, tiny little hairs. He can FEEL all of it even before it touches him and when they do it’s like they grip down through his flesh and bones and SQUEEZE.

“Easy, take it easy—“

He fights because that’s all he knows to do, can’t articulate that the pressure of being touched—of the very air on his skin is painful. The sound, EVERYTHING.

_Stop—please stop. Don’t touch me._

The voices stop and Dean clings to the sheets. Loses himself in the sudden overwhelming MASS and WEIGHT of everything.

His brain short circuits and for a while there is nothing. He just checks out, goes somewhere else. Separates himself from the pain and the overload and ceases to exist.

0-0-0

The Impala wasn’t parked exactly straight, Bobby pulled his own car up on her right so the bloody sigil Castiel had painted on the fender was hidden by her shining black bulk.

There were no lights on in the room but the images Castiel had shoved into his brain like a sharpened stick, were very clear. Dean and Sam were in there.

Sputnik leapt out of the car and scurried away toward the grass to relieve herself. Kicked a few times in agitation and shook herself out before returning to Bobby’s side.

“Go on, GET!” Bobby shook a booted foot at her to keep her back while he levered the angel out of the car, pulled one limp arm over his shoulders and took most of his weight.

The door was locked and Bobby bumped it with his foot a few times.

Sam answered the door with a gun in his hand, his eyes were wide and his hands were shaking, he watched as Bobby stepped high over the line of salt on the floor and dropped Castiel on the nearest bed.

Dean was on the other bed, knees drawn to his chest, hands over his ears visibly shaking. Bobby moved to reach for him, to see if he was injured but Sam caught his arm and held a finger to his lips, waited until the older man nodded and stepped back, then leaned close and whispered;

“Don’t touch him, don’t make any loud noises. Something happened—I don’t know what but it’s like all his senses are turned up to ten.”

“Like a bad acid trip,” Bobby breathed back, “Had one of those once, not something I’d wish on anybody.”

Sam cocked an eyebrow at him surprised.

“What? I grew up in the sixties, what’d you expect!”

Sam shook his head and stepped back, went to the angel and checked his wounds, loosened his belt and shoe laces and collar then flipped a blanket over him; “Should we risk a hospital?”

“Damned if I know,” Bobby shuffled around the room checking the salt lines, contemplated turning on the light and thought better of it. “He’s lit up like a sky scraper inside.”

Sam peered beneath the bandages with his penlight; “It’s clotted up and he’s breathing freely… I think he’s unconscious.”

“Do angels pass out?”

“Apparently,” Sam turned on his knees and scanned the room, produced the blade Castiel had been stabbed with. “This did it.”

Bobby took it, looked it over and scratched his head; “We’ll, keep it close then…” He eyed Sam askance and worked his tongue around the backs of his teeth, flexed his fingers around the hilt of the sword; “So… The cage popped.”

Sam stopped midstride, back to Bobby and his shoulders hunched up a little farther.

“I thought killing Lilith would stop this, but the angel said she was the key all along.”

Sam exhaled and seemed to sag; “It was my fault.”

Bobby says nothing, just watches him, how his fingers lift and pick at a dried flake of blood on his jacket; “I trusted someone—something, that shouldn’t have been trusted. I knew better and I did it anyway.”

“Why?”

Sam shook his head, pushed it down; “It’s my fault this happened and I’m going to make it right. One way or another, I will make this right.”

“We’re talkin’ about the devil, Sam. You can’t just ‘make it right’.”

He looks up and there is denial in his face, conviction and stubborn determination; “Well, if I can’t find a way… I’ll make one.”

Bobby shook his head and motioned to the other bed; “Keep an eye on Dean.”

Sam padded across the room and slid into the floor between the beds, back to Dean, hands on his knees, gun at his hip. Ready and unflinching.

Bobby settled in on a chair and they waited for morning.

0-0-0

It’s not an easy thing. Not by any means.

Bobby helps the angel into his car, then helps Sam get Dean into the Impala, tries to ignore the choked noises and tense muscles as his own and Sam’s hands move against the sleeping bag Sam had wrapped around his brother.

Dean hasn’t woken up. Not really. He’ll flinch and lash out and say ‘NO!’ or ‘DON’T’ in a hiss of a whisper, but aside from that he’s quiet, tense and unmoving.

Bobby follows Sam, watches every movement as they drive.

It starts raining for a while, then clears up, then gets cloudy again. It’s pretty uneventful. Once or twice Bobby sees Sputnik’s head peek up over the back of the rear seat, tongue lolling as she investigates. Just happy to have her humans back.

There are numerous messages on his machines when they get back to the salvage yard that evening, Bobby ignores them until he gets everyone inside and the angel is staggering around painting sigils everywhere in his own fucking blood.

As if he hasn’t lost enough already.

Dumb bastard nearly falls over his own feet and Bobby pushes him down on the couch, plants the dog on his legs and throws a blanket over him.

“Make yourself useful,” He says, “Don’t die.”

Castiel scowls at him but stays put. Bobby thinks maybe he could teach Dean and Sam a thing or two about LISTENING.

Bobby stops Sam from leaving three times just that first day. He corners the kid in the yard twice trying to hotwire an old Chevelle with a bad transmission Bobby’s been trying to sell to a car guy in Indiana for a year now but the guy’s wife is being picky about ‘saving for a new volvo’.

Volvos. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Bobby grumbled all the way back inside; “If you’re gonna steal somethin’ at least have the decency to take the damned key instead of pulling out my wiring!”

Sam stopped trying after that and hid himself away in the panic room with armfuls of books on demon lore.

Bobby got very fed up, very quickly.

Castiel tolerated Bobby changing his bandages with all the grace of a goddamned stone. He looked on distastefully at the scabs and blood and made unhappy faces when he tried to get up or move and it hurt or Bobby told him to stay put, or eat something or drink some water or swallow these pills or HELP dammit because Dean was screaming and clawing at his face and JESUS what did the Winchesters get him into THIS TIME.

Sam heard it all. Bobby knew he did. But he was stubborn and angry at being duped.

“You think you’re the first hunter to get tricked by a demon, Sam? You got another thing coming!”

But Sam was quiet, only came up to go to the bathroom or get food or check on Dean every so often when things quieted down, then he was gone again. Pale and gaunt with increasingly dirty hair from the many passes of his nervous fingers through it.

“Aw, to hell with this,” Bobby said to Sputnik on the third morning when he saw Castiel up and wandering around in a borrowed shirt, painting more sigils on the walls in his blood.

He made the call while he was making breakfast. Sausage and gravy with pancakes.

By four that evening there was a Blazer parked in the yard and Bobby had started putting together steak and baked potatoes for dinner. He had time enough to explain to his guests what had happened, point out the angel—who was out cold on his couch—the obstinate silence from the panic room and the huddled mass under a pile of quilts in the upstairs guest room before the nightly calls started pouring in.

_“We got omens popping up like chickenpox over here, Bobby. Send who you can.”_

_“Old hauntings are picking up greater activity… We’ve got hot spots and cold spots all over the map.”_

_“Singer, I need any info you can give me on things that drink cerebral spinal fluid.”_

“What kind of bite we lookin’ at?”

_“Single wound, about the size of a pencil eraser in the back of the throat, straight into the spinal column, cauterized chemically from the autopsy reports… by stomach acid.”_

Bobby sighed and went for his bookshelves; “Give me a minute…”

0-0-0

There are footsteps, liquid sloshing sound and something cool and wet folds against the back of his neck. He can TASTE it through his SKIN. Stale and rough, cleaned with caustic chemicals and baked dry in a dusty HOT place with too many SMELLS; Hot wet fabric, steam, stale cologne of too many conflicting brands, salt and dirty sticky UNCLEAN bodies, slowly decaying sloughed off particles of skin.

He feels like he’s in a sewer. Feels like his body is caked in sludge and he’s drowning in used toilet water.

The voice from earlier rises and falls, and he just wants it to end. He just wants it to STOP.

He feels his skin grating against the insides of his clothes like sandpaper. He feels like an exposed nerve. Like a toothache in his whole body. Raw and open and defenseless like a newborn.

There are more voices now, they sound like the roar of a crowd and they won’t shut up even when Dean demands they be quiet. They shift and move and the rustle of their clothes is deafening, cracking like lightning against his senses. The scuff of socked feet against carpet is like titanic pieces of glass rubbing together with sand caught between them. Each breath is a bomb blast.

He can’t take it.

He just cannot take it and blessedly there is respite, unconsciousness. SILENCE.

He sleeps…

More than that—

He DREAMS.

Everything around him is quiet, soft. Dim like candlelight. Nothing has defined edges. Even the ground at his back feels like an expensive mattress. Soft and supporting, supple—cradling him from all sides and holding him safe—warm.

There’s something shaped like a window to his left with billowy curtains but no glass, no scenery. No wind.

There is a face hovering over him and—

NONONONONONONO

**“Dean—”**

He comes awake with a gasp, fighting even as he struggles to fully regain consciousness. Fingers tearing, legs snapping together—kicking at the blankets he’s tangled in, frantic and lost in the burning GRAY of nothingness.

Blankets?

He feels over-sensitized, like when he has a fever or a cold and just doesn’t feel well enough to make himself get out of bed when he should.

He can feel each hair on his cheeks and chin, longer than he remembered, practically a beard—Jesus Christ, it ITCHES!

The world is dialed back considerably, still much too loud, too MUCH against his skin, but it’s more easily tolerated than it had been before. This is SO MUCH better.

He goes limp, lets the easy unyielding pressure of hands loosely circling his wrists guide his arms back to the sheet, feels hands that are more than physical and less than physical on him. Two non-physical ones on his head, two on his shoulders, the physical ones resting lightly on his forearms. There are more. He can feel, sense their presence, but they’re not touching him. They’re folded together close, hidden.

Dean stretches out with this Sense and feels the person/Being over him relaxing, allowing the search.

He knows without even seeing him who it is, knows even though the thrum of POWER is near nonexistent. He knows because Castiel just—Dean KNOWS him. Knows the feel of his borrowed skin and the pressure of Him and it is so strangely familiar and weird and Dean almost recoils from it because the familiarity is alien and he doesn’t know where it’s come from so he doesn’t trust it.

“’m OK,” It comes out in a dry rasp and Castiel releases him, sits back until he’s nothing but a weight on the edge of the bed. Dean breathes quietly a few minutes before he tries to open his eyes—

And can’t.

He reaches up curiously, stupidly maybe and his fingertips bump against gauze, pain sparks behind it and—

_BRIGHTNESSWINGSHANDSFACEFACEFACEOHJESUSFUCKINGCHRIST **MYEYES—**_

Dean’s hands slap upward and cover his face and all he can think about, all he can see in his head is the burning HORROR of what had come out of the Cage and images flashing and flashing and flashing of Pamela Barnes’ eyes literally BURNING out of her fucking head!

Dean comes back to himself a little while later breathing heavily, body aching like he’s gone three rounds with a particularly fling-happy demon or had a particularly nasty seizure and there are different hands on him, another weight on the edge of the bed. It takes him a few minutes to realize he’s talking, quick and high;

“Ican’tseeIcan’tsee _Ican’tsee!”_

“You’re alright. Dean, I promise you’re alright!” A hand through his hair, dabbing the sweat from his temples with a damp cloth, “Now just calm down and breathe, OK? You gotta breathe.”

Dean doesn’t immediately know who is talking to him. The voice is softer, higher than anyone he can think of, the hands are too small, calluses in the wrong places. The smell is wrong—gin and coffee and Vanilla Fields—

“No… nonono,” He shakes his head, pushes at the hands, “No, Sam— ** _SAM!”_** The sound echoes around in his head, rings like a bell and shakes the walls. He clamps his teeth down on it in fright.

“Sam is just fine!” The voice rises and falls when Dean goes quiet, hushes itself to keep him calm because his voice has never done that before and it’s not normal. It’s not right. Something isn’t right.

“Sam’s outside. YOU need to just calm _right down.”_

He tries to sit up, feels the cut across his stomach pulling, wonders if there are stitches or if someone’s used butterfly closures to keep him together. Wonders what kind of messy ugly scar will be left to him because of it and his fingers wander down and prod gingerly at the front of his shirt, feel the gauze taped down beneath it.

“Cas?”

A sigh, “Downstairs.”

“He’s bleeding—I-I can feel it. It’s all hot and cold.”

“He said he’ll be OK, he just has to rest.”

Dean’s hands come up again and bump dumbly at the bandage wrapped around his head, feels nauseated and off kilter. “’he burnt out my eyes.”

“What?”

“The—When he came out he burnt my eyes outta my head!”

“Your eyes are fine,” The hands come back, pull his down and press them to the sheet firmly. With a kind of warning that says, ‘stop touchin’ it you stupid man’.

“Don’t lie to me—”

“It’s not worth lying about. Your eyes are fine. What we can figure from what Castiel told us is it’s like snow blindness… He said you’d be OK once you worked through the –uh— the excess grace. Your system just got overloaded.”

“Where’s Sam?”

“Outside.”

“Where am I?”

“The North Pole. Santa’s workshop,” A sigh, “You’re at Bobby’s place. Been here four days now.”

“Ellen?”

“In the flesh.”

He sighs, relaxes a little; “I—I can’t see.”

“It’s alright. You’ll be alright.”

Dean curls away from her. Tries to center himself and put on a brave face but he never realized how difficult it was to fool someone with smiles and witty come backs when all he could see of her was a mental image of her face curled into anger and disapproval.

He’s still shaking, even though he’s telling himself not to. Even though he’s clamped down with all his muscles in an attempt to hold still, to show no weakness because he’s been nothing but weak lately and he’s sick of it. He’s sick of being scared and hurt and pathetic. But he knows this isn’t the end of it, can feel the memories bubbling there in that crater in his mind.

He had wanted to know, hadn’t he? He’d NEEDED to know… But Castiel had been right. It’s not worth it. It’s dark and painful and frightening and some of it—Jesus, he hadn’t wanted to remember some of it, would have been happy to never know it had happened at all. But now there’s no taking it back, now there’s no stuffing it down again.

Strictly speaking, so far it has all been the same, endless years of agony. Alastair’s sick games. His different faces and forms and shapes. The little pokes and prods, the times he’d strung Dean up and cut out his heart, then sat there for hours sticking pins into it because he knew, even if it was separated from Dean, he could still feel it. Every molecule, every atom. EVERYTHING.

Sometimes it’s worse. Sometimes it’s the r—the rape and Alastair’s wearing faces other than Cas’s. He’d had vague memories of it being like this, but he’d pushed them back and away. He’d been too bothered by them to let them be remembered, it was easier to accept it from the face that had looked like his Cas, because his Cas wasn’t real—But now… Then again, maybe the head injury had helped with keeping those memories at bay, maybe it hadn’t. Maybe they’d been sucked into that bubble Zechariah had made in his head along with the rest purely by accident. Perhaps Zech had been inordinately kind and decided that memories of a demon violating him wearing… looking _like that_ was just something Dean didn’t need to remember in full detail.

But, there it was now and Dean couldn’t get rid of it. Couldn’t hide from any of it.

Sometimes Alastair would spend DAYS carefully cutting away every fiber of muscle and nerve and vein, perfect vivisections. He would talk while he did it. Sometimes mundane things, sometimes not so mundane. Alastair was a professional at psycho analysis. He was a goddamned shrink from hell. Would ask about the relationship you had with your mother and how that affected your sex life. How being fucked to death by your brother or father impacted your masculinity, all while he dissected some other person’s eyeball and left you hanging there untouched but knowing your time would come. He could be infinitely patient, Alastair. Other times he demanded answers and wanted them that instant and if you didn’t or couldn’t supply them he took it out of your hide.

Sometimes they’d ‘Role Play’ and Dean got to be the psychologist and Alastair talked about this Oedipal complex of his. How everybody got to fuck his mother so why couldn’t he? Then he pouted like a fucking child and spent a few hours punching holes into Dean’s kidneys with a pencil.

He liked to have his breakfast though, before they got down to business. Sometimes that meant torture while he did so. Sometimes it meant a replay of all the horrific things Sam was doing topside. Sometimes it made Dean wonder how long exactly he’d been down there since it felt like YEARS to him but Alastair talked like it had only been a few weeks.

It’s harder to make himself step back from the memories when something keeps drawing him back to them. Every time he falls asleep it’s something, some torture, or something indistinct that leaves his underwear sticky and a hollow ache in his chest.

Three more days pass like this and Dean feels himself drawing thin.

He eats the sandwiches Bobby or Ellen or Jo brings up for him. Lets them check the bandages on his stomach and prod at the edges of the wound checking for infection.

He takes his medicine, sits and listens when Bobby insists on trying to talk to him, but doesn’t participate in the conversations. He’s too wrapped up in the reality that he and Sam failed… that HE failed, that all of this could have been prevented if Dean had just been stronger, had resisted. If he hadn’t been so _weak._

The first seal wouldn’t have broken if he’d just held out a little longer. The angels would have come for him and everything would be OK.

But no. Dean was weak—PATHETIC—he’d broken in only thirty years.

How had Dad withstood a hundred of it? How had he been able to say no for so long?

_Because he’s better than you. He was made of sterner stuff. The stuff of heroes._

He scratches bloody lines into the skin of his arms and grinds his teeth until his head hurts, scratches his scalp and in a fit of spitefulness throws the glass of orange juice Bobby had brought for him with breakfast across the room, satisfied when it shatters against the far wall.

Bobby grumbles while he cleans it up, leaves Dean shut up in the bedroom and doesn’t bring him any dinner so Dean doesn’t eat.

Castiel comes up at one point and stands over him for a while. Says his name but Dean tells him to go away, that he smells of BO and he should learn to fucking shower.

So Castiel leaves him alone. Dean hears the shower running for a while, smells Jo’s shampoo and Bobby’s soap.

Three more days come and go and Dean doesn’t say a word unless he’s whimpering in his sleep or jerking away from any touch or offer of help.

He almost falls down the stairs again twice, does the third time. Slides down on his already bruised hip. He spends a lot of time sitting by the couch near where Castiel is ‘Resting’.

The angel doesn’t move much, not unless he’s making himself worse rubbing gobs of his blood over the symbols he’s drawn on the walls. Bobby asks him a few times if his blood would work, but Castiel only blinks at him through squinted eyes and goes about his business.

Apparently even the great Bobby Singer has his breaking point because on Friday afternoon he stomps out of the house grumbling about a deer getting into his herb garden and that they’d better stay away from his roses.

Jo took up time helping Sam research. Spent long hours down stairs gently trying to encourage him to eat or sleep while she kept reading. Once or twice she got him out of the basement, but it seemed as soon as Dean was mentioned or came into the room Sam was gone again.

It only took three times of this happening before Dean got the hint and stopped coming down if Sam was there.

Dean only leaves the room because Ellen gives him no other choice. She tells him she made French Toast and he needs to eat. Maybe he can make the angel eat because Jo’s getting tired of hearing his stomach grumble.

He decides, maybe having these memories won’t be so bad if he could find a distraction. Find something to occupy himself with so he doesn’t have time to think about them, but then he opened his eyes… tried to, they were held gently shut by surgical tape and gauze. And the only thing he can see is that aching gritty grayness and the bandages Bobby had tied around his head.

He loses the will to move like some people lose their keys or pocket change but Ellen is relentless. Knocks her knuckles against the door rapidly and says; “Come on, it’s getting cold!”

She doesn’t go away until he’s on his feet and has his shoulder leaned against the wall. She follows him down the stairs and the whole time he feels like he’s about to step off into oblivion any second.

It was embarrassing. Fucking hell. Having to tiptoe around with his arms out feeling around everything so he knew where he was. Pathetic. Knocking over his coffee cup because it’s two inches closer than he thought it was. Missing his mouth with the fork, or getting the fork in his mouth easily but whatever had been on it had fallen off before it got there. That happens three times in a row before he pushes back from the table with a screech of chair legs on the hard wood, lurches to his feet—

And walks face first into the doorway.

Forks clatter on dishware and Dean stands there cursing with a hand over his mouth, prodding his teeth with his tongue and his nose with his fingers, grateful at least that he’s not bleeding.

“Dean, you OK?” Ellen says, but nobody got up from the table.

“Peachy,” He finds the doorjamb with his hands and feels around it with his toes, thrusts one hand out in front of him and bends at the waist a little because if the doorway is there the desk has to be close and he doesn’t need to hit himself in the crotch on top of everything else. He can FEEL their eyes on him as he moves away, right hand out at about waist level feeling out the features of the hallway. He finds the stairs and wants to stomp up them and hide somewhere to lick his wounds so to speak but if he does that they’ll know he’s upset, so instead he moves on. Feeling around in the dark even when he knows everyone else can see him, but they’re all quiet, all STARING and thinking he’s pathetic. Dean feels pathetic. Feels chewed up and spat out and naked in a crowded room. And not sexy naked either. Pathetic, cold sick naked. Or naked like in hospital rooms.

“Dean, do you need some help?” Jo calls from the kitchen.

Ellen hisses at her low in her throat, it’s supposed to be a whisper, but Dean hears it clear as day. “Let him do it himself, Jo.”

“But—“

And Dean turns his head toward the sound; “I can fuckin’ hear you! I don’t need any help goddammit!” He finds the end of the hall

Ellen gives her daughter a Look. Dean FEELS it. One of those ‘he’s a stubborn ass man let him do it and when he gets hurt then you can tell him how to do it correctly’ looks. He HATES those looks.

His hands find a stack of books and knock them over on his way to the couch—which he finds out too late is occupied.

Sputnik lets out a panicked shriek and wiggles out from under him. Dean curses, then curses again louder and rolls onto his knees in the floor with his arms out looking for her. “C’mere you stupid mutt!”

“She’s not stupid,” Castiel’s voice from the other end of the couch is probably the last straw.

“Who the FUCK asked you!”

“You’re the one who sat on her, how does that make her stupid?”

Dean gave up, pushed to his feet and stumbled off balance into Bobby’s desk. He’s angry. He knows he’s angry, grabs something and turns to throw it and is stopped by big hands on his wrists, prying his hands away from the book and growled words in his ear.

“That’s ENOUGH!” Bobby’s voice has a hard edge to it. He plants one palm on Dean’s chest and knocks him back onto the couch; “Now you sit down and cool off! I don’t give a damn if you walked into the wall or you stubbed your little toe or went down the stairs on your ass! We’ve got bigger fish to fry! I could understand if you HAD got your eyes fried outta your skull. Hell, I’d probably hand you things to throw around! But this is TEMPORARY. You’re snow blind. This time next week you’ll be so ashamed of how you’re actin’ right now I’m tempted to let you have your little tantrum and bust holes in my walls just to make you feel guilty when this is all over and you see what a mess you made! But I’m not gonna do that because it’d be petty! But don’t think I’m gonna cater to you anymore. Not when you’re actin like a whiny little bitch!”

Dean clenched his jaw and turned his face toward his knees, tried to pretend he wasn’t flushed red in humiliation.

Bobby stomped into the kitchen then returned, grabbed Dean’s wrist and shoved his plate into his hand. “Now eat your food or I’ll give it to Sputnik and you can have the Alpo!”

Bobby went back to the kitchen and took his seat. Dean heard forks pecking and scraping against plates, heard Jo whisper; ‘Don’t you think you were a little harsh?’

And Ellen whispered back; ‘It’s what he needed to hear.’

0-0-0

Things get messy later that day.

Ellen doesn’t let him disappear back upstairs. She invades the bedroom with a mop and Pine-Sol while Bobby grumbles and starts organizing his books and papers. Jo disappears into the basement to ‘Help Sam’ but if the stomping size twelves that come up the stairs fifteen minutes later are any indication she went down there with the express purpose of getting Sam OUT.

Sam doesn’t say anything to him.

Dean doesn’t say anything to him.

Castiel watches from the end of the sofa with Sputnik, casual observers who just don’t quite get it.

Sam goes upstairs and takes over the bathroom for an hour.

Dean sits at the kitchen desk and listens to everything until the very sound ACHES in his skin. He shoves up and back from the desk, arms out and goes for the door. Bobby calls out for him but he doesn’t reply, stumbles against the furniture and doorways, gets his hand around the doorknob and wrenches it open, feels cool air on his cheeks and slams the door behind himself.

He stands there for a moment with his face tilted up into the wind panting, fighting back a growing tension in his throat and sinuses. Then with a growl he claws at the bandages over his eyes and wrenches them away, rubs his fingertips against his eyelids warily, afraid he’s been lied to and he’ll find nothing but loose skin and empty sockets.

But his eyes are there, they open and ACHE and BURN like he has sand in them and the world changes color from black to graygreen and back again when he slams them closed in discomfort.

He stumbles around swinging his arms and finds the edge of the porch, bumps his fingers against the plastic sheeting Bobby still hasn’t taken down from winter, the musty outside smell of it comes back mixed with the smell of his own breath and he sits down, leans against one of the posts and rests his elbows on his knees. Just SITS for a while and relishes in the illusion of solitude.

Castiel comes out a few moments later. Dean knows it’s him, he can just TELL for some reason. Like some people can tell between Diet and Regular soda just by the taste. Dean can tell just by the sound of his footsteps and the tingle of OTHERNESS in the air.

The angel doesn’t say anything just stands over him staring for a long time.

Dean bears the weight of his gaze until it feels like ants marching under his skin. He rubs his palms over his arms; “What?”

“You shouldn’t have removed the bandages—“

“Yeah, I get that,” He turned his face away. “What do you want?”

“Ellen said I should come check on you.”

He snorted; “Well, I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

Dean didn’t say anything for a while, sat there with his arms crossed on his knees feeling the wind on his face, smelling the earth as it thawed and the chill in the wind. “You should go back inside,” With a sigh he gestured toward where he thought Castiel’s chest was; “You’re still all hot and cold.”

“I don’t understand—“

“You’re still bleeding… Not physically, but still.”

Castiel was quiet for a moment, thoughtful; “She came very close to striking my core.”

Dean swallowed; “If she had, you…” He lets the words hang there unsaid, found his skin itching and his head buzzing with the memory of it. The SOUND of the blade finding flesh, that pained little grunt of surprise that had popped from Castiel’s mouth—

Castiel dropped into a crouch and his fingers caught Dean’s wrist—didn’t pull, but held for a moment as if asking permission.

Dean flinched, but after a breath allowed his hand to be moved and placed on the angel’s chest. He could feel gauze and tape beneath a borrowed shirt. Could feel the firm ridge of the wound and imagined a mirroring one on his back where the blade had pushed through.

But beneath it he could feel a tingle—a circuit of energy that suddenly connected between them. It struck him then that this wasn’t a man kneeling here beside him, it was a creature born of the ‘Ecstasy of God made Manifest’.

He had a strange and sudden mental image of smoke in a jar with flickers of light and he grabbed at the familiarity of the memory. Like déjà vu made solid, tried to hold it tight, but it slipped free and was lost again in that void.

Dean’s fingers twitched and Castiel maneuvered his hand around the wound, not to feel the flesh and stitches, but to feel what was BENEATH them.

“You’re cold there,” Dean twitched his hand toward the center of Castiel’s borrowed chest; “But it’s hot there.”

“The term you would use is ‘scar tissue’. My grace is thinner there, constricted.”

And Dean knew, felt the grace in his chest leap when his mind finally grasped what he was feeling. “You—uh… That’s—“

“That’s where the grace I gave you came from.”

“You can’t heal it?”

“An injury caused by grace—“

“—‘Doesn’t always react’ yeah, yeah,” Dean shook his hand free and crossed his arms self-consciously over his chest. “You’re not gonna bleed out are you?”

“No, eventually it will stop, but until then I will be essentially powerless.”

“Essentially?”

“I’m not as helpless as a human, but I’m defenseless by angelic standards… My vessel hungers, demands sleep.”

“So you’re gonna take a siesta and Jimmy—“

“No.”

“No?”

“He’s hidden. I don’t have the power to bring him forward at the moment.”

“But when you stop bleeding you will—“

Castiel exhaled carefully; “I’m cut off from Heaven, Dean… But the others have no way of cutting you off from the charge of the Host, so if I remain in close proximity to you I will be able to siphon off enough to begin rebuilding what I have lost but it will take time—“

“Whoa, what? Cut you off? They can do that?”

Castiel shifted, sat adjacent to Dean with his hands resting lightly on his folded legs. “Grace is in constant flow in heaven. Think of it as a living thing. When left alone it grows and flourishes. When severed or taken into an angel, eventually, through use or time it burns away to nothing.”

“So if you go back up there you can recharge?”

“If I return to heaven I will be captured or killed on sight. If any other angel finds me here on earth I will likely be struck down without hesitation.”

“Why?”

Castiel fidgets, Dean can feel it.

“Cas, why would they kill you?”

“I was told not to go to you… I was told not to heal you—And I did.”

“So they wanted me dead or dying?”

“Zechariah wanted you vulnerable, which you still are. Lucifer is free on the Earth, Dean. He’s searching for his vessel and when he finds it the hex bags you and Sam carry will not be able to stop the Angels from finding you.”

“So, all we gotta do is stop Lucifer from finding his vessel. Easy.”

“No, not easy,” He said it like he didn’t quite grasp how Dean’s brain functioned, “It’s LUCIFER, Dean. Do you understand this?”

“Yeah, yeah. The Devil wants our heads on a silver plate. Gotcha… But if he can’t find his vessel— You said yourself finding a vessel isn’t easy.”

Castiel let out another breath. His frustration was damned near palpable.

Dean rubbed his prickly chin on his arm; “You’re making ‘stupid human’ noises. What am I missing?”

“You’re not going to be able to stop him, Dean. You’re not going to be able to stop this. You’re just a man.”

“Oh, and I suppose YOU can stop it?”

“No,” Castiel seems to flare a little and his breath hitches.

Dean hesitates, forces himself to breathe and tilts his face away because it’s unnerving having Cas staring at him and being unable to look back at him; “Well, it doesn’t mean I’m gonna just sit back and let it happen. Fuck that. I’ll fight to the last man. This is our planet, if the angels and demons wanna duke it out they’ve gotta find somewhere else to do it!”

Castiel stared at him, he could feel it. It made the little hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. “What?”

Castiel doesn’t speak for a moment and when he does there’s a softness, a curiosity to his voice; “You would stand up to Heaven and Hell knowing you have no chance of victory?”

Dean wet his lips, settled his jaw on his arms and shrugged; “I’m not just gonna sit on my ass and wait to die. I may not have a chance of winning, but I guarantee by the time we’re done they’ll remember us. They’ll remember we put up one hell of a fight. That we didn’t fight because it was ‘Divine Plan’ or ‘Fate’ or all that bullshit, but because we CHOSE to.”

“Choice is that important to you?”

Dean snorted; “It’s all I’ve got to call mine in the end. And nobody—angel or demon, is gonna take that away from me again.”

Castiel shifts again, seems to come closer although he hasn’t moved; “Then you must learn to defend yourself.”

Dean snorted; “Dude—“

“Not as a human would. Your guns and knives will do very little against an angel. You have grace, you must learn how to use it.”

“And I suppose you’re going to teach me?”

“Yes.”

“You just said you’re…” He shifted away a little, felt crushed by the angel’s presence. “Just back up a little, OK?”

Castiel didn’t move.

“What do you mean ‘use it’? All it does is make people glow funny colors and ghosts run screaming.”

“You can also burn demons with it.”

Dean’s jaw clenched and he turned his head, felt stared at and freakish; “No, I can’t.”

“You can. I saw you do it.”

He hunched up tighter, wanted to shrink away into nothing. “I can’t.”

“Dean, why does this scare you?”

The memories come unbidden, free floating images and sensation. Seeing Sam strangle that demon to death months ago, seeing him deport Samhain. All the dead demons in Saint Mary’s… The black POWER around him, the complete lack of anything that candy-apple red Dean remembered from before, struggling so against the black.

Castiel was quiet when he spoke, whispered like it was a secret; “You’re afraid it will corrupt you.”

“Why can’t I see myself, Cas? I’ve looked in a mirror, I’ve looked at myself. There’s nothing. No color—What does that MEAN? Do I—Do I even have a soul anymore?”

He isn’t expecting it, the weight of a hand on his shoulder, isn’t expecting his heart to jump in fear of it, or for the touch to retract just as quickly as it had landed. Dean feels perhaps even humiliated that he flinched like a goddamned Chihuahua.

“You have a soul. I don’t perceive things like you do, so the point of my describing it to you is moot, but you have a soul. A bright and beautiful soul, Dean… This is just how grace works. I could never see my own grace like I used to my brothers and sisters. We aren’t meant to. Maybe, for this same reason, you’re unable to see your soul.”

Dean doesn’t know what to think of that, curls in a little tighter in an attempt to separate himself from this ACHE in his middle.

Castiel shivers and shifts closer, even as Dean tries to lean away. Winds up sitting there with the line of his thigh, shoulder and hip pressed against Dean’s, hands resting evenly, calmly on his knees.

Dean swipes fingertips at his face, grits his teeth because the moisture burns in his eyes like shampoo; “Personal space, Cas… We gotta teach you about personal space.”

“I’ll submit to your lessons if you’ll alow me to teach you how to properly use your grace so you don’t cause yourself further harm.”

Dean threaded his fingers through his hair, “What happened anyway?”

Castiel sighed; “Your body absorbed some of the energy released when Lucifer emerged. It didn’t know how to process it—“

“So it blinded me?”

“The human body is fragile. It’s not made to contain or process such a large amount of unfiltered grace. You have been using what I gave you to enhance your senses, mainly your sight. This was just too much.”

“So, that’s how you normally see the world? All—BRIGHT and shit?”

“A small fraction, yes.”

“I could SEE sound, Cas. I could taste it and feel it in my head like a fucking ocean—“ Dean tilted his face and squinted at him, saw a haze of brightness behind the gray-green of damaged cells. “How the hell do you stand that?”

“I process the information differently. You only have six main senses. Five truthfully, because the sixth is deteriorated to virtual nonexistence in all but a fraction of you… Angelic Sight is more than just visual. It is not so crippling continuing to exist without it when one still retains their other senses. But without them—“ Castiel tilts his face up and looks around, has his hands held close to his vessel. Dean isn’t sure how he knows that, it’s like he can feel Castiel’s edges, sense how he’s moving and arranging his limbs. Can feel a weird sort of vulnerability as the angel presses just half an inch closer to him. It’s probably one of the stranger things he’s experienced—and that’s saying something.

“You feel blind.”

“And suffocated… Human senses are limiting, confining. My Vision has been gone for a while now. I’ve adapted to it. But this—How do humans survive like this? So UNAWARE of everything?”

“Are you OK?”

“Being blind?”

“Being practically human.”

He doesn’t answer.

Dean thinks that says more than words ever could.

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	29. Balance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Warning for mentions of self harm and discussion of suicidal thoughts)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, my grandmother had a health scare and I had massive writer's block. It's broken for the moment, so I'm writing as much as possible. Lets hope I can actually finish more chapters on time this go round.  
> Thanks Jessi! *hugs* I owe you big!

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

It comes like all the others, but it still feels different.

A harsh ringing in his ears even as the redhead in the leather cat suit is pulling her zipper down, letting his fingers slip in and find the firm, supple mounds of her breasts, unrestrained by silk or lace because she just loves the scrape of leather against her tight pink nipples.

It’s a dream, Chuck knows it is. He’s had it since he was thirteen and popped his first boner at summer camp. He’s nearing forty but it doesn’t matter. This is better than any of the other dreams he’s had recently, especially after he’s drunk himself into a coma waiting for the Heavenly Transistor in his head to dial in. She looks a little like Traci Lords with bouncy red sex hair and Chuck thinks maybe he’s been reading too many Black Widow comics and then she blasts apart in front of him, a million tiny glittery pieces that fly off like stars into blackness.

It feels like Chuck is being hauled around by his brain stem. Yanked left and right across the globe at impossible speed. He’s surprised his fucking face hasn’t peeled back. Everything is BRIGHT and SCREAMING and the images don’t make sense. Nothing makes sense.

He’s reminded vaguely of being six maybe seven years old and his mother catching him dancing around in his underpants wearing her bra and shoes singing ‘These Boots are Made for Walkin’. She’d just about shaken the life out of him. Screaming just what would your father think! Do you want to kill me? Do you WANT to give your poor mother a heart attack! My blood pressure’s gone through the roof! Look at me! I’m breaking out in hives!

Chuck felt like that now, yanked around by the back of his neck. Guilty and irritated while that voice roared and screeched slow and drawn out like he might not understand otherwise.

It was different. It wasn’t clear like the others, all jumbled and brilliant, like that time he spent the summer with his cousin Sylvester in Arizona and the dick had given him something dried and crunchy and earthy flavored in the back room of his tiny mobile home and Chuck had woken up two days later naked in the back of an old Coupe Deville that was rusting to shit in the arroyo with a tub of Vaseline and lipstick marks on his chest. Memories painted vivid and psychedelic like a comic book from hell or the Dali painting with the melting clocks. All Go-Go dancers and shiny platform shoes and dogs that smiled with light in their mouths. Strange men in business suits and laser beams coming out of their eyeballs.

Maybe it had been the peyote, maybe it had been his first encounter with angels, Chuck didn’t know. Didn’t care to know, in all truth. He just endured it because he had to. He could kill himself, but they’d just bring him back.

What would his mother think about that!

He woke with a jolt, pain still slicing through his head and down his neck, felt himself practically levitate off the couch, fingers clawing at the air. Tension and helplessness and hopelessness like the blood in his veins. Then down he went again with a thump into the floor. He laid there for a while on his face struggling to breathe, thinking about what would happen if he just outright refused to write what they had shown him. Or what would happen if he just… just altered it a little.

Would it change anything? Would it help?

He pushed himself up, crawled to his chair and slithered up into it like a slug, sat there staring at the computer screen, lit up and waiting patiently, eagerly.

Chuck wondered what his mother would think of all the not-so-loving-things he had to say about the angels and god now. He rubbed his palms over his face and reached for the mouse—

There was a tiny yellow dot in the bottom corner of his computer screen.

He stared at it, blinked, stared some more.

Chuck Shurley hadn’t had internet service since his divorce. Not because he couldn’t afford it, but more because the angels perpetually hovering over his house blocked it out, tried to keep him from communicating with the outside world about what he was doing. But for some reason, there it was. Weak, but there.

He was almost afraid to touch it, afraid to click lest it be a test and the angels become angered with him further. But the temptation was too great, like the draw of his eye to the lovingly rendered breasts of comic book females.

Chuck clicked. Waited—and made a call.

0-0-0

There are only so many days a person can stay cooped up in a house with five other people before they go crazy.

Dean reached this point days ago. He had tried going onto the porch for air, tried exploring the rooms upstairs, had even gone up into the attic looking for peace and quiet and some solitude, but he hadn’t been up there for more than an hour before there was Castiel, soundless and creeping up to watch him.

It got on his nerves real quick.

Jo was always hovering around the corner watching him. He could feel her. She BUZZED like electricity with the need to DO something about him. To ‘Help’. Dean grew more and more irritated as the days wore on.

Bobby wouldn’t leave him alone for long, kept asking him what he was doing, if he’d come get the damned angel because he was eyeing those sigils again, or telling him to go down stairs and give Sam a hand.

Right, like he could help with research when he couldn’t even see where he was going.

Sam though, was worse. He was short tempered, swore that he didn’t need help, avoided Dean like a plague. Didn’t say anything when they happened to meet in the kitchen or on their way to or from the shower. Nothing but a few impatient sounding sighs passed between them for a full week and Dean grew angrier and angrier.

The only good thing to come out of the past week was the easing in the gray haze from his vision. There were shapes and bright spots. No colors yet, but Castiel assured him that would return in time. He just had to continue shifting the grace to his other senses so his eyes could heal.

It was harder than Dean thought it would be, reminded him of ‘Ghost Training’ months ago, it had the same effect. He’d managed , in the last three days alone, to break five lightbulbs and according to Bobby he’d made the TV go all gray and fuzzy at the edges while he was scanning weather reports.

Dean had also realized, quite by accident, that if he concentrated hard enough, he could hear what people were saying in the next room. He found this most amusing when, that afternoon, he overheard Bobby downstairs grumbling about the state of his garden and this damned doe that kept eluding him by hiding behind the shed and dodging around the cars in the scrap yard which made it practically impossible to find a clean shot.

Ellen had been putting away groceries at the time and laughed at him. “Why don’t you just poison it if you’re so desperate to see it dead?”

Bobby had scoffed, offended; “I ain’t gonna poison it… Waste of good meat.”

“What, you ain’t got enough meat in here?” Ellen thumped something around in the fridge; “We’ve been here nine days and we’ve had bacon or sausage for breakfast every morning, sandwiches for lunch and either meatloaf, fried chicken, beef stew or some of that frozen mystery meat of yours every night.”

“You complaining about my cooking? And it’s Pork.”

“I’m complaining because the only vegetables I’ve seen are Sam’s and I’m still not convinced he’s even eating them.”

“What’re you talking about. I made beans last night.”

“Beans don’t count as a vegetable when you cook them with two pounds of back bacon.”

Bobby mumbled something unintelligible.

“Look, there’s all these nice greens going to waste.”

He snorted; “Still think some of that stuff’s marijuana.”

Ellen’s voice smiled; “Well, why don’t you try some and find out.”

“Had my fill when I was younger.”

Jo giggled. “Wow. I didn’t think you had it in you!”

“It was the seventies.”

Ellen thumped something else; “I lived through the seventies and I didn’t.”

“Yeah, well you were still in pigtails.”

“Exactly how young do you think I am?”

“Enough.”

“Flattering as that is, I was plenty old enough.”

**“Dean?”**

He nearly jumped out of his skin, senses reeling in like a rubber band snapping back against his fingers; “Jesus, Cas!” His heart hammered against his ribs and he bent over his knees to regain his breath. “Don’t DO that!”

“You didn’t answer the door when I knocked. I did knock.”

Dean flopped back on his bed with a sigh.

The rest of that day was spent arguing with Castiel.

Castiel insisted that if Dean just shifted the grace to his other senses his eyes would heal relatively quickly. Dean insisted that he didn’t know HOW to ‘Shift the Grace’ and they spent two hours sitting in the kitchen with their knees touching and Castiel’s fingers pushed into Dean’s scalp trying to SHOW him, which was, to say the least, ineffective, because Dean couldn’t relax enough to let Castiel’s dwindling grace move his own around, like shifting the limp limbs of a sleeping roommate.

Dean remembered doing that to Sam a lot as a kid, finding him deeply asleep and balancing his arms upright at the elbow. He’d done it to Sputnik a few times in the past months, catching her asleep on her back and coaxing her paws into standing up.

Dean just couldn’t relax though, could FEEL the way his grace went tense and defensive when Castiel reached out toward him. Like an animal that’s been kicked too much.

Dean felt kind of like he’d been kicked too much, wound up irritated and hopeless feeling, stomped out onto the back porch and dropped into that old recliner Bobby had had sitting out there for years now. It smelled like mildew and rain and slowly decaying sponge, had a few acorns stuck in it from busy squirrels and probably had a spider or two in it, but it didn’t matter. He sat and pushed a hand through his hair, found the scars on the side of his head and scratched at them. Felt himself pulling at the little curls starting to form behind his ears. A growing desire for clippers and the bristly scuff of a fresh haircut against his palms—but the scars. People stared at them. Stared at HIM, stared at the dog. They NOTICED him.

Dean’s skin itched from inactivity. His bones ACHED from it.

He wanted—NEEDED to get out—get OUT and AWAY and DO SOMETHING.

Instead he was stuck here, sightless, useless, helpless—

He slammed his fist into the arm of the chair a few times, heard a bird in the shrub by the edge of the porch flutter and take off in fright, felt the grace BURNING along his nerves looking for an outlet.

His hands felt hot… the muscles ached and his skin tingled, his ears rang, the sound like a wet finger run along the lip of a wine glass.

Jo was upstairs in the little bedroom at the end of the hall sorting through her things.

Ellen, Bobby and Sam were in the kitchen and Castiel was sitting at Bobby’s desk in the library reading—

“Got a call from Rodriguez this morning,” Bobby’s voice was hushed. “’said there was talk of a town in northern Idaho ‘dropped off the grid without so much as a whimper three nights ago… He and his boys are goin’ up to check it out, but it don’t sound good.”

“What’d the weather map look like?” Sam’s voice.

“They’re calling it ‘radio interference’ because of the earthquake. Doppler can’t penetrate within a five mile radius of the place,” Papers shuffled. “It’s like a black hole or something. Nobody’s heard a word from anyone who lives there. All calls in go to dead air, not a single one out… National Guard is being rounded up to head in Monday. That gives you four days.”

Ellen’s voice is hushed, reasonable but tinged with trepidation, “Could be nothing.”

“If that’s true why ain’t folks been coming outta there like bees? Any traffic goes in doesn’t come back out,” Bobby spoke into his coffee cup.

“So, what’re you thinking?” Ellen again.

“Something big.”

Sam rapped his knuckles on the tabletop; “It could be him… Anything between Ilchester and there?”

“Rufus’s on his way to Colorado following up on some omens… A flood in New Mexico, drought in Kansas, wildfires in California, missing persons reports, a bunch of feral cats run over on the New Jersey turnpike… Stuff’s happenin’ all over. I’ve spread people out, just waitin’ to hear back. Those twins you told me about a while back, the ones you and Dean helped with the shifter? Eddy and Edith Lark? They’re on their way west from Tennessee to help out, you know ‘em better than I do, should I send them to Idaho or to meet with Rufus?”

Sam let out a put upon sigh; “Would Rufus accept help?”

“Depends on if he needs it or not.”

Sam sighs, his palms scratch over his face; “I don’t know… They’re dedicated, quick learners, but they’re inexperienced with demons and if there’s something big at either place they might just wind up in the way.”

“Sam, this is all hands on deck. We lost a LOT of seasoned hunters to the Witnesses, we don’t have much of a choice here.”

Sam’s foot tapped against the linoleum impatiently; “I can’t make this decision… If something happened to them—“

“Sam,” Ellen’s voice was soft, “If we don’t stop this exactly how long do you think they’ll survive?”

He sighed, ground his teeth; “Rufus… Send them with Rufus.”

Dean ground his teeth and took a slow deep breath, let it out and pulled his senses back in carefully, scuffed his palms over his face and scratched at the coarse hair growing on his cheeks and chin. He breathed deeply, in and out, trying to calm himself, let his jaw relax and focused on the grace, focused on finding the edges of it inside himself on pressing and molding it like a ball of pizza dough, pressing it carefully into the hollow shape of his body and senses.

It’s not at all like Castiel had tried to explain to him. Where Castiel’s explanation had reminded Dean of a lava lamp, pushing the amorphous shape of the grace around where he needed it, dividing it into equal smaller balls, Dean focused on filling himself with it, pressing it carefully out into every cell and nerve.

It stole his breath and made every muscle in his chest and stomach cramp, ache. Made his eyes water and his felt too skin sensitive, and yet it was like that sense of relief one gets while urinating after holding it for too long. It hurts but at the same time it feels amazing. Dean felt pathways in himself opening up, felt the grace forging little highways between his senses. It—it felt both uncomfortable and euphoric and left him breathing quickly, shivering and covered in gooseflesh.

_Okay… Okay. I did it, now come on, come on—_ He pried his eyes open, blinked and pounded his fist furiously against the arm of the chair twice when his vision remained unchanged.

Of course, it fucking figures. Nothing can EVER be easy, can it… No, that would just be too convenient. Too much good luck.

Christ almighty.

Dean pushed himself up and wobbled back inside, ignored Bobby and Ellen and Sam and groped along the wall toward the stairs. Jo said his name as she passed him on his way up but he ignored her, found himself shut away in the bedroom again and pacing like a caged beast.

He didn’t want to be up here, didn’t want to be STUCK like this but he had no choice, he’d wandered out into the yard a few days before and wound up disorientated and standing there waving his arms around looking for something familiar. Lost and dizzy and angry at his own stupidity. He’d snapped and growled and spat insults when Jo had come to get him an hour later, but he didn’t feel the least bit sorry for it. He was done with this bullshit DONE.

His stomach ached with anxious nausea and his fingernails bit into his inner arms, scratched at the little ridges of scar tissue on his inner wrists, found a spot on his face and scratched until his fingernails felt sticky and wet.

He was brimming with useless, frantic energy and frustration and could do NOTHING about it. It made his skin burn, made sweat bead on his brow and his fingers and toes twitch and writhe.

He threw himself down face first on his bed, wriggled around and pulled off his shirt, threw it toward the window and pressed his face into the pillow.

_Calm down. Calm the FUCK down, you’re not helping anybody like this, just cool off._

Three deliberate knocks and the door opened; “Dean?”

Dean groaned into his pillow; “Fuck, Cas…”

“I felt you shifting.”

“That’s nice—“ He rolled his head on his neck, felt the cool of the air on his cheeks and eyelids; “What do you want?”

“You’re overheating because of it. The human body wasn’t meant to endure such a constant circulation of unfiltered grace, you need to be careful.”

“You keep saying that… What does it even mean?”

“Grace filtered through an angel isn’t as harmful as long as that angel makes the conscious decision to protect the ves—the person’s body.”

“And I don’t have an angel in me, so…”

“If you don’t keep yourself from cycling it like this your metabolism will speed up to the point that your body begins to physically digest itself. You will develop a high grade fever, become terminally dehydrated and if the sheer heat doesn’t kill you multiple organ failure will… eventually. That’s another side-effect of grace, if you will. It will keep your body going far past the limits of normal human endurance.”

He turned his face back into the pillow with a quiet groan; “Why’d you do this to me, Cas? What good does it do?”

“I did it to keep your soul from shattering. If you can manage to learn to control it, the grace will be very beneficial to you.”

“Right, the stuff that blinded me and is currently cooking me from the inside out is good for me?”

“If you can control it.”

“And if I can’t?”

“If it doesn’t permanently damage to your brain, nerves and internal organs before it dissipates, it will eventually fade back to its original level and cause you no harm or benefit.”

“And learning to control it will make it stop cooking me alive?”

“Yes.”

Dean rolled onto his side, pushed up to sit against the headboard and wiped sweat from his upper lip. “Fine, what do I do.”

0-0-0

“Is it not customary for men to have facial hair?”

“Some men, me not-so-much.”

“Bobby has facial hair, so did your father.”

Dean pressed the heels of his hands into the sink and heaved out a breath toward the bowl; “It itches like a bitch and I don’t like how it feels.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t understand what?” He pressed the fingers of his left hand to his cheek and turned on the shaver following just under his fingers with it. The buzz was louder than he’d expected, but Castiel seemed observant enough to speak louder to compensate.

“How things irritate the human body like a bitch.”

He snorted. “It’s a figure of speech,” He tilted his chin up. “You watchin’? I’m not doing this to you so you’ve gotta pay attention.”

“Wouldn’t a razor be more efficient?”

“And then I’d break out like a teenager…” He scraped his fingertips over his cheek checking for any places he’d missed; “Doesn’t matter if I use aftershave or not. Close shaves don’t agree with me.”

“Sam uses a razor.”

“Sam also can’t sunburn even if he’s trying and I can slather myself in SPF four-hundred and I wind up looking like a lobster…”

“You have your mother’s fair skin.”

“Yeah, shuddup.”

Castiel fidgeted where he’d planted himself on the edge of the tub. Dean could feel the nervous energy flowing off of him.

“What?”

“I don’t know how much longer the hex bags you and your brother carry will protect you and the fact Zechariah hasn’t tried to infiltrate your dreams or Sam’s is disconcerting… Zechariah will be less likely to communicate with you in your dreams now that you are in full possession of your faculties and are learning to control the grace, but there are ways around the hex bags and Sam’s mind is still wide open to a more powerful angel.”

“Anything we can do about that?”

He hesitates, it’s barely even a hitch in his breath but Dean feels it;

“If I tap more fully into your grace I can syphon off enough to mark both of you with concealment sigils. And if Sam is capable of lucid dreaming he should be able to expel any angel that makes contact with him if he is forceful enough.”

“Lucid dreaming?” Dean wrinkles his nose, “Isn’t that where you—“ He motions vaguely to his crotch. “And you’re not ‘tapping’ me.”

Castiel lets out a put upon sigh. “If I don’t I won’t have enough grace to place the sigils on you.”

“You really need to grow a sense of humor.”

He sounded frustrated, damned near irritated; “I’m sorry if I don’t find your innuendo amusing, Dean. There are more pressing matters that require my full attention.”

Dean clicked off the shaver and groped for the cleaner brush he’d left on the counter, cleaned it up and held it out butt first in Castiel’s direction. “If you don’t lighten up a little you’re gonna crack, it’s bad enough when Sam works himself into a hole, he’s human, you’re not. You’ll probably blow out a wall or something.”

Castiel took the shaver with a little more force than was strictly necessary and their shoulders bumped as Dean stepped away from the mirror to make room for him.

“Don’t slit your throat.”

“I don’t plan on it.”

0-0-0

Dean had never realized exactly how difficult it was to tune out the world around him, especially when all his senses were screaming at him. His vision was slowly swimming back into true focus as the day went on and by six that evening the world was a mixture of light and shadow and streaks of vivid color where people should be.

He’d tried and tried and tried some more to dial it all back and couldn’t. “Cas… You should take some of this shit… It’s driving me nuts.”

Castiel nodded, his color bobbing a little. “It will likely be somewhat unpleasant. I warn you because if it is painful the grace will lash out defensively unless you remain calm.”

“Yeah, I get it, ‘relax ‘s just a little pinprick’.”

“I don’t—“

“Just get on with it,” He stood from his seat and sat his dinner plate aside.

Bobby grunted curiously and Dean felt the tension rising in the room.

Castiel stepped closer and put his hands on him. One on his chest the other on the back of his neck.

Dean had experienced rapid blood loss that felt less jarring.

Castiel hadn’t so much grabbed and pulled on the grace like a kid with a ball of cotton candy as Dean had been expecting, more as he gently fitted his non-corporeal hands into Dean’s chest, cupped his fingers around it and created that connection he’d been preaching to Dean about. It was like a spark between two naked wires, a short—and there was a quick RUSH of SOUND in Dean’s head. Like the chatter of voices in a shopping mall at Christmas and the weird feeling of something draining away. Sound and sensation and a whirlwind of thoughts that made no sense—

**_Relax, Dean. Relax._ **

He nearly went to his knees but Castiel’s arms wrapped around him and settled him back onto the couch.

The next second the hand on his chest burned HOT and Dean heard a popping—creaking noise like stressed wood and it felt like he’d been punched in the chest by a gorilla. His breath hitched and exploded out of his mouth in a startled grunt and Sam said his name urgently from far away.

“What’s happening, what did—“

Then Sam made a similar bark of sudden undeserved pain and dishes rattled as Bobby came up out of his seat and pushed his plate toward the desk.

Bobby said something, shouted and Ellen was yelling too but Castiel raised his voice; “They’re fine! No angel in creation can sense them now. Not Zechariah, not the-the archangels… no—“

And Castiel’s color flickered, dimmed and he crumpled to the floor with a thump of limp limbs against hardwood.

It was instinct. Dean rolled forward onto his knees on the rug and his hands roved over Castiel’s face, felt a few little prickles he hadn’t cut off earlier and an unnatural heat in his skin. He wasn’t sure if it was from the grace, or if the wound on his chest had finally become more than what mojo he had left in him could handle.

Dean flinched when someone dropped into a crouch beside him, ground his teeth and tangled his fingers in the front of Castiel’s borrowed shirt. “Don’touch’im—“ He ground his teeth to keep the words in, hoped nobody had heard them in the sliver of breath they’d slipped out on.

“Easy,” Sam’s voice was just a whisper and Dean clamped his eyes closed, afraid to look, afraid his brother’s color will still be snuffed out by black.

Sam sighed and shifted a few inches farther away, fitted his big hands under Castiel’s shoulders and neck and lifted him upward, shifted him onto the couch with only a grunt of effort.

Jo—flickering bright green, like limes and grasshoppers— pushed a cushion under Castiel’s head, shuffled around and put another under his feet.

Dean didn’t move. Let the others move around him like the tide. Gripped Castiel’s limp hand in both his own when Bobby eased down on creakingPOPPING knees and pushed the body onto its side to get at the exit wound, muttered something and turned to Ellen, spoke clearly about the storage closet outside the kitchen by the bathroom, saline, ketamine, amoxicillin—better make that something stronger.

Castiel’s color flickered and his hand twitched between Dean’s own, squeezed and released, squeezed and released.

_You stupid son of a bitch, Cas… Why didn’t you tell me you were so low? Why didn’t you take more?_

_Fearsorrowguiltexhaustion_

It happened so quick Dean wasn’t sure what it was, there and gone again like a brush of butterfly wings, left him tingling in his head.

There is movement and silence, Bobby works Castiel’s sleeve up and slides a needle into a vein, hangs the bag of fluids from a coat hanger hooked on the curtain rod. They eventually drift away and leave Dean sitting there gripping Castiel’s wrist and palm counting the too quick beats of his heart, focusing, trying to PUSH with his grace, trying to carefully feed more of it into him.

It was like trying to fill a water bottle through a straw. He could feel little sips sliding in but never enough. He kept trying. Barely heard Bobby talking in the hallway to Ellen or the click of the door. Only lifted his head when he heard a car engine spark into life in the yard, only realized what had happened when Ellen pulled over Bobby’s desk chair and perched on the edge at his shoulder. Carefully lowered a hand into his hair, carded her fingers against his scalp just firm enough to ease the tension growing in the back of his neck but gentle enough to lull him into some kind of stupor. Rhythmic, older than time itself, like a heartbeat heard over generations.

Dean remembered his mother doing this and part of him tried to flinch away and snarl in defense of his outward dislike of such things, while another long hidden, hell burned part of him pressed back into it and wept for the little bit of comfort he had craved for so long. Like ice for a fever.

“How’s he doin’, kid?”

He shrugged, incapable of speech. The words melted on his tongue, glued his mouth shut, gummed up his throat and made it hard to swallow and breathe.

“Feel like talkin’?”

He swallowed convulsively.

Ellen hummed and continued just touching, simple and innocent and without blame or expectation. A forgiveness unasked and undeserved but offered just the same. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re back…” A soft choked little huff of a laugh, “Wasn’t the same without you, yanno…”

They sit in silence for a long while, the clock ticks and the wind whistles past the windows. She clears her throat. “Dean—You know you can talk to me, right? If you ever want to talk I’ll listen.”

He didn’t move, could barely breathe, focused on the beat of Castiel’s stolen heart and the beat of his grace like a distant drum.

“Well, if you change your mind,” Ellen leaned close, cupped her hands to his ears and lowered her lips to the crown of his head.

It burned in his chest, a hollow void he’d felt out before but never been fully aware of. A sense of something missing, something wanting.

“If you knew the things I’ve done… you wouldn’t waste your time.”

She hesitated, bent slightly forward like she was going to stand. She shifted back again and resumed the passage of fingers against his hair. “Oh? What makes you say that?”

He shook his head.

Ellen nodded, worked her tongue against the backs of her teeth; “It’d take a lot to make me hate you, Dean Winchester. A lot more than even Hell can throw at you.”

He gave a wet sounding snort and pulled his knees toward his chest, Castiel’s hand on his thigh. “I don’t… I can’t go back there.”

“You won’t—“

“No, I—I can’t think about it. I think about the things I did and I just—I—“ He sees it behind his eyes, bubbling up like bile, souls and screams and blood and faces twisted in agony and hatred and rage. “I don’t want to remember… but it won’t— I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay… What do you want to talk about?”

“Sam.”

“Sam… right, what about Sam?”

“Where’d he go?”

She inhales deeply and lets it out. “Sam and Bobby went west. There’s a mess in Idaho and Rufus Turner’s up to his ass in demons in River Pass Colorado apparently.”

Dean makes a judgmental noise in the back of his throat; “And they just left me here?”

“They didn’t have a choice, Dean. Sam’s only trying to protect you.”

“Yeah, right… That’s all we ever do and now the world’s ending… Doesn’t that tell you something?”

She lets out a sigh, a deep sorrowful noise; “Your angel there said that some other angel had you down for the count and from what Sam’s told me he thought you were dead… Someone upstairs was pulling strings, Dean. You’re just human, ain’t much you can do against something that powerful.”

He grinds his teeth, feels the words and hatred bubbling up the back of his throat. _I could have lasted longer… I could have said ‘No’. I could have been stronger. I **should** have been stronger, but I’m not… I’m not strong enough. I’m weakpatheticuselessstupidneverevergoodenoughruinedruinedRUINED_

Castiel’s hand twitches again but he doesn’t wake.

Dean’s breath hitches and his fingers trace the ridges of Castiel’s borrowed fingers, “Maybe he’s right… Maybe he should just go, leave me here where I can’t hurt anybody else.”

“Dean—“

He shakes his head; “What else can he do? I’m useless like this. I’m just dragging him down with me…” He lets out a self-depreciating snort; “I can’t even look at him for fuck sake.”

“Why not?”

_Because he knows? Because he’ll look at me and I’ll be able to see the pity in his face, the disgust—_ “I don’t know what color he is anymore.”

“Color? What… You can see again?”

He shakes his head, feels her fingers still; “It’s coming back, but right now all I’ve got are shapes, dull colors, but I don’t know if he’s still the way he should be.”

“Does it matter?”

“He—“ Dean swallows nervously, “He was all black in Ilchester—like a demon and I can’t.”

Ellen lets out a breath, “You’re saying that a lot.”

“What?”

“’I can’t’. I know you’re scared, hell, that much is obvious, but you’re not gonna be any less scared if all you think about is ‘can’t’. It’s OK to be overwhelmed. After what you’ve been through I think everyone can agree that you deserve some time off… Bad thing is the world can’t wait until you’re in a better headspace. We need you now—and we need you to DO, Dean. Even if it scares you, ‘cause if you don’t there isn’t gonna be a world left for you to take a break from…”

“I can’t do anything anymore.”

“Why? ‘Cause you can’t see yet? Bullshit, I’ve seen what you can do with that grace you’ve got. Bobby and Sam told me about the knives and the bullets. That is important stuff too, Dean. That is REALLY important stuff and you don’t need to be able to see to do it! You’re not broken! A little dinged up, yeah, but aren’t we all?”

Ellen’s fingers found the bundle of scars on the left side of his head and he flinched, tried to shrug her hand away but her fingers were stronger than they looked, insistent. “This where that demon got you?”

He hunched his shoulders.

“Yeah, they told me… Told me you haven’t taken your pills in about three days and you haven’t been eating either,” She swatted him, “You think this is optional? Demons are after you, angels are after you and you’re taking that kind of risk with your health? You’re damned lucky I don’t put you over my knee—“

He snorted, felt Castiel’s hand twitch in his own and moved without conscious thought, brought the angel’s cool fingers up and pressed his lips to his knuckles.

Ellen’s fingers tightened on his scalp and Dean felt every muscle in his stomach and chest draw tight.

Stupid—of all the shitty stupid things—

Ellen’s fingers began moving again; “Should I ask or pretend I didn’t see anything.”

His thumbs moved, felt out the little veins on the back of Castiel’s hand and the creases of his palm, the bandaging on his wrists. “It’s not what you think.”

“It’s none of my business what you two do—“

“No, it’s—it’s not that—“

“Whatever you say—“

He turned in her direction, face scrunched up in something close to anger; “It’s not like that—I can’t…I don’t—I haven’t,” He shudders and a little voice in his head that sounds like Alistair hums Gershwin and peels back the memories of Canonsburg and Jamie and that guy from the bar to look at through a projector made of his ribcage and Dean can’t breathe. Drops Castiel’s hand and folds in on himself nausea rolling around in his stomach like something alive and fighting for freedom. He digs his nails into the backs of his arms.

Ellen is making shushing noises, is rubbing circles on his back. “Hey, what is it? Kid, there’s nothin’ wrong with—“

“Please—“ His breath comes back in a jerk, forceful, without his permission; “Don’t touch me.”

She lifts her hand away immediately. “Okay, now you need tell me what’s going on… Dean—has—has he hurt you?”

He laughs, it’s wet and terrible sounding to his own ears choked off into the cave of his arms and knees. Turns his head and stares at the color of the angel, all indigo and distant galaxies. “No.”

“Well sorry if I’m not convinced… Is—is this about what happened… There?”

“Really rather not talk about it, Ellen.”

She sighs, worried and confused. “You need to… You need to talk to someone or it’s gonna eat you up inside.”

And she’s right, he knows she is, but he can’t. Not now, not tonight. Not with Castiel lying there unconscious and Sam hunting—goneleftabandonedimdangeryoufailedhimyoudidthisitsyourfalut—without him. So he shakes his head, folds his arms over his knees and doesn’t pull away when her fingers continue petting over his hair.

0-0-0

Dean thought maybe he’d dreamed, lying on a few folded blankets by the couch where Castiel lie motionless. There were hands and teeth and cutting as was par the course since he’d come back but there was something else, something distant, unreal feeling. Images painted out in muted dusty gold behind his eyes. A taste like chocolate and marshmallows and soda pop in the sticky summer heat. Truck stops and bruises on small, too serious faces.

He tried, clawed at the memories in an effort to bring them back because there was something there, some MEANING he couldn’t quite grasp, but they melted like snowflakes between his fingers and were gone.

Bobby and Sam called twice from the road and Ellen answered. Dean found an excuse to leave the room or ignore her when she said Sam wanted to speak to him. He sat by the couch and fitted his palm across Castiel’s forehead or mopped the sweat from his face with a wet cloth.

Castiel woke sometime after noon while Dean was in the shower and when he made his way down stairs again the angel was sitting in the dusty recliner on the back porch. He didn’t seem fazed by the fact he’d fainted the night before, or the fact he was huddled under a blanket shivering. He seemed curious or perhaps annoyed by it more than anything. Spoke in clipped snappish sentences and Dean thought that it was probably his own fault, payment for being so worried about the winged dick, so he left him there, stomped into the library and pushed Sputnik to the other end of the couch and took it for himself.

Stupid angel. Stupid Dean for being so fucking worried when all it got him was a harsh attitude. And still, he thought a crabby angel was an improvement to the silent apathetic one. At least he’d not carved up his arms that morning to repaint the sigils on the walls. Bobby’d had to stitch the last one and if Castiel was going to be stuck like this indefinitely, the last thing they needed was someone catching sight of the marks on his skin and thinking he was suicidal.

Dean dipped his fingers under the cuffs of his sweatshirt and ground his teeth. He seemed to be keeping bloody scratches on his wrists and the insides of his thighs, sore stinging places that bled if he picked at the scabs. Physical, solidifying… comforting.

His stomach rolled nervously and he pulled his fingers away, squeezed them together and pinched them between the pressure of his knees.

What had been a relief or a distraction wasn’t so much distracting and relieving anymore. What if someone saw? What if Sam saw them again? What if Bobby found out? What would he think? What would they think of him if they knew he’d started hurting himself again?

The worry was a heavy weight, a catch twenty-two if you will. He scratched and made himself sick because he worried, because the pain made him feel REAL again, made the world around him feel like maybe it did exist and wasn’t another torture. And when it was done, he worried himself sick because of what he’d done, made himself eat even if he wasn’t hungry because Sam gave him looks, worried what his brother would think, so he put his fingernails to his wrists. Worried even more when he realized he couldn’t stop himself from doing it, digging in deeper to get some kind of reaction. He did it without thinking and had to make himself pull back, had to fight it because what if they saw! What if they KNEW! Sometimes he felt he could step back from the situation, look at it from an outside perspective and he couldn’t believe he was doing this to himself, how the cycle had consumed him… but he did it again and again and withdrew a little more.

He hadn’t got as far as taking a knife to his skin, but he worried that it would happen, that the guilt and the nightmares and that wheedling little voice in the back of his thoughts would just become too much and his knives or his gun would look too welcoming, too ready to offer him an escape… An end to it all.

Dean had never been one to dwell on suicide. Nor was he going to admit that he’d thought about it a few times in his life, more so recently and with more conviction. It was somehow scary to admit that to himself. To stop and think; What if it gets so bad I just… I just do it to make it stop. What if I can’t make myself stop? Why am I doing this to myself?

He’d never been frightened of his own behavior before, not until Hell. But now, since he’d been freed, everything seemed just a little bit frightening. Mainly it was the little things, the stray ideas and thoughts that crept into his head in the stillness of the night, or after a nightmare. Dean was frightened. Not just of what had happened to him, but of what he might do because of it.

“Ellen?” Was that breathy croak his voice? He worked his tongue around his mouth and tried again; “Ellen.”

Her shoes scuffed on the rug; “Dean?”

His throat felt tight, too tight. “I—I need help.”

“What is it?” She bent over him, put a hand on his arm and flinched when he grabbed at it with both of his own. “What’s wrong?”

And he said it, felt it like a dam breaking open in his chest; “I need to stop… I need to stop before I kill myself.”

Ellen was sure her heart stopped, had to force herself to breathe to get it started again and curled her fingers tightly around Dean’s, found that in that moment it was impossible for her to let him go. “Stop what? What is it?”

His hands shook but he pulled back the cuffs of his shirt and exposed the bloody places he’d been trying to conceal, the thin—almost frail appearance of his wrists, the bones visible beneath thin dry skin, the bruises on his knuckles shaped like his teeth.

Ellen had grown up in the seventies, been a teenager when eating disorders were as common as acne and a hundred times as damaging. She hadn’t done it herself, she’d been happy with herself and happy with what her soon to be husband thought of her. But that wasn’t to say she didn’t know the signs, didn’t know what the bloody scratches on Dean’s wrists meant or the naked hurting NEED in his unfocused eyes.

“Okay,” She shifted back and drew him up into her arms, pulled him close and wished she were bigger or he smaller so she could wrap herself protectively around him and soak up all the pain like an amoeba or some shit, “Yeah, that’s gotta stop.”

It had been such a long time since Dean had been truly held like this with more intent than to express momentary gladness. A brief squeeze from Bobby and another from Sam, one from Anna when she’d found him in the woods on that farm in Union. Other than that all physical contact he’d experienced in months had been fleeting, casual, emotionless, or in some cases, cloying, possessive and panic inducing. At first this felt like it might fall into the latter category and all his muscles tensed, pulled tight like bow string around his bones, but Ellen hummed low in her throat; “’s’alright.”

It made him entirely too uncomfortable, self-conscious and all too aware that he was a grown man letting himself be cuddled like he was a snot nosed kid crying from a fucking nightmare. Too close, too warm TOO MUCH—

The worst thing though, was the fact that it helped.

Ellen’s fingers were biting just a little too hard into his skin and she was squeezing just a little too tightly. It was constricting in a way that wasn’t possessive more as compressive, holding him together when it felt like he might fly apart. He wedged himself closer unconsciously and the added pressure made the half healed gash across his stomach pinch and burn, but it… it was a good kind of pain, it made the world feel real. And at the same time he wanted to pull away because he didn’t deserve this, didn’t deserve the kindness she was showing him, the mercy of her embrace.

“What do I do?” Ellen’s voice was quiet, barely a hiss of breath over strained vocal cords. “What do you need me to do?”

He shook his head, pressed his palms over his face and tried to pull away in shame but she held fast.

“Don’t,” She spoke quickly, “Don’t you dare try to hide this from me. Not now… You show me how to help—if you don’t know that’s fine, but don’t hide this anymore. Don’t swallow it up or it’ll poison you,” Her breath shook in his ear. “I can’t lose you again… So, just tell me what you need. Tell me what to do.”

He didn’t know, didn’t know how to even begin answering that question. So after a long while of silence and secretive glances from Jo around the doorframe before she scurried away, Ellen pulled him up by his sleeve, made him put on his shoes and pulled him outside. Made him help her sort out what remained of Bobby’s herb garden.

He thought it was a waste of time, he couldn’t see much of anything, but the longer he crouched there in the dirt and patted at the stubby little sprouts of herbs, finding where the deer had damaged them, the brighter the world around him became.

He paused, shook his head and hunched a little closer, pushed his fingers into the soil and felt around for the fragile little roots, felt something like static cling jumping between them and his fingers, felt a gentle easing of tension in his core he hadn’t even known was there.

He squinted, blinked and waved a hand in front of his face. “Son of a bitch,” A snort and he brushed the dirt from his palms.

“What?” Ellen plucked a few grass blades from around the sage.

“Plants are like grace vampires… Or those little fish that eat the dead skin off your feet.”

“Little fish—What?” She shook her head, “What’re you talkin’ about?”

He curled his fingers in the dirt, ground his teeth and PUSHED.

Ellen watched silently and after a few seconds muttered; “Jesus,” under her breath and brushed her muddy fingertips over the tiny green shoots pushing their way out of the ground around Dean’s hands. “What else can you do?”

0-0-0

Bobby and Sam came back Friday afternoon.

Bobby’s right eye was swollen shut and he walked like maybe his hip was bruised but it was hard to tell, he was cranky and stubborn enough to give a Winchester a run for his money and getting him to admit he was sore, especially with Jo and Ellen around, was harder than it looked.

Dean was at the table in the kitchen halfway focused on a set of objects Castiel had laid out for him. Castiel himself was slumped in Bobby’s desk chair with a blanket over his shoulders and a feverish tint to his cheeks.

Sam came into the kitchen, glanced their way—and went straight to the fridge, took out a bottle of beer and downed half of it in a series of four hard swallows then leaned his forehead into a the cabinet and pushed his hand into his pocket.

What he pulled out glowed in Dean’s vision. Like a miniature little red sun. It reached out toward Sam’s color and seemed to swallow it, EAT it.

The ring made a metallic clink noise against the countertop when Sam put it down and Dean stared at it with a weird nervous feeling in his stomach.

“What the hell is that?” Dean wrinkled his nose, crossed his arms and tried to rub out the sensation of goose flesh rising on his arms and the back of his neck.

Sam glanced at him, didn’t meet his eyes, and away again. “War’s Ring.”

“War?”

Sam took another, slower drink of his beer; “The Horseman.”

Dean’s chin drew closer to his chest. “Horseman… As in The Four Horsemen? That War? You— You KILLED War?”

“War is a personification of solidified Intent, he cannot be killed,” Castiel’s pale lips were drawn into a thin hard line.

Sam made a slashing motion with his beer bottle; “Cut off a few of his fingers.”

“Why!”

Sam jerked his chin up and hissed through his teeth his eyes distant, troubled. “Seemed like a good idea at the time, yanno?”

Castiel said nothing, blinked at the ring; “Did you put it on?”

Sam shook his head; “I don’t even like touching it,” He stared at it, like maybe he couldn’t look away—or was afraid to. “It’s warm… it’s _always_ warm,” He tipped the bottle to his lips and spilled a little more in, swallowed, didn’t blink.

“So, what? We take a road trip to Mount Doom?”

Sam looked at him again, met his eyes only for a second and his gaze flicked away again. Dean felt something sour rising in his gut.

“Hey, Sam?”

Not so much as a grunt.

“Yeah,” Dean wet his lips and tried not to snap; “Not blind anymore, Sammy… Wanna tell me why I got ditched like a fat girl at prom?”

Sam’s lips drew down noncommittally and he shook his head; “No.”

“No?”

He finished his beer and opened the cabinet by the fridge, fished around for a bottle of scotch he was sure Bobby had mentioned he’d stashed behind the coffee cups.

“I fuckin’ deserve to know why you decided it was a good idea to go off on your own. You could’a been killed!”

He found the bottle and unscrewed the cap, didn’t bother with a glass just tipped it to his lips.

“I’m talkin’ to you, Sam.”

Castiel snaked a hand out of his blanket and held his fingers up in Dean’s direction, cutting him off; “Sam,” His low voice seemed to ring with something deeper, echoed with grace he pushed into it, reaching for Sam in an effort to calm the writhing tendrils of him lashing and stabbing out in all directions. “Sam, it wasn’t your fault—“

He turned, wheeled around like he might lunge across the space and attack Castiel. His color flared, all black with weak, transparent smears of dull red. “Don’t—Just—just get OUT of my head!”

“Hey!” Dean bared his teeth, “He doesn’t have to be in your head, you’re broadcastin’ like a goddamned radio!”

“Oh, so you’re a mind reader now? Great, fantastic. I get chewed out and ostracized for a couple visions and you’re sneakin’ peeks into people’s heads,” Another drink, “That’s great, really great.”

“I’m good but I’m not that good. You’re lit up like Vegas, man. I mean, what the hell happened?”

Sam snuffed and took another drink, followed Bobby with his eyes as the older man limped in and went for the coffee pot, settled himself gingerly into a chair across from Castiel and let Ellen take a look at the cut on his cheekbone.

It wasn’t a happy story. Not by any means.

Sam spoke clearly, practiced. Told them how they had found Eddy and some red headed kid when they made it into town. How Eddy had been twitchy and wide eyed behind his glasses, small frame further swamped by the size of the gun he was carrying, how the redheaded kid had been all elbows and knees and too big feet as he’d thrown holy water on them and muttered his way through the first half dozen words of the exorcism before Sam had corrected his pronunciation.

He told them about the townsfolk in the church basement, the fact Edith and Rufus had disappeared, all the demons, the growing pile of bodies.

How Sam had been captured and Eddy had gotten away simply by virtue of his size and a swift punch to his attacker’s balls.

Sam swallowed another mouthful of whiskey with a convulsive shudder and motioned to the bruises and cuts on his face, the gauze and duct tape around his fingers… The sound Eddy had made when he found out what the army vet had done to his sister, how it had taken both Bobby and Sam to pull him off the man and the vet had been lucky Bobby hadn’t just let Eddy kill him.

Sam went quiet after that, eyes red rimmed and glassy from the alcohol. But he didn’t cry. Probably wouldn’t until he was too drunk and violent to feel the pain of his broken fingers. Until the guilt and anger in him grew too loud to be contained and he was too drunk to keep it pushed down.

Dean pushed to his feet and left the room, stepped out onto the back porch in the failing light and pressed the heels of his hands to the porch railing, butted his head against a post a few times and tried to choke down the ache in his throat. He looked out toward Bobby’s herb garden and saw a flick of a deer’s ear, laughed low in his throat and rubbed his wrist under his nose.

He heard Bobby’s feet on the linoleum and the bolt of his Infield just as the older hunter stepped onto the porch, brought the gun up and muttered something about his damned eye and bared his teeth.

The shot was loud in the stillness of early evening.

But the high pitched shriek that echoed through the salvage yard was louder.

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	30. And The Box it Came In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS JESSI! *blows kisses*

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

Bobby practically threw his gun and the back door burst open as three bodies tried to shove themselves out at the same time.

Jo made it through first followed by Sam and Castiel took up a position by the window staring with a curious expression on his face.

Dean darted toward the garden and found nothing but a tuft of deer hair and a few drops of blood. No steak that night.

It was Sam that found the girl. Two rows back from Dean sprawled out in the dirt with a smashed digital camera in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

She was thin, almost gangly with a long thin nose and rose-gold colored hair.

Bobby cursed bitterly and kept asking; ‘She alright? Dammit, Sam, did I shoot her!’

The girl looked like some kind of grotesque rag doll hanging over Sam’s big arms, head flopping, mouth open.

“Where the hell did she come from!” Ellen bent and began scooping the girl’s belongings back into her bag. Found her wallet and flipped it open as she followed Sam back inside. “She’s got ID… Rebecca Rosen, twenty-five, from Pine Creek, Delaware… Ticket stubs from the bus, receipt for a rental car in Sioux Falls.”

Sam put her on the couch and shifted toward her feet plucked at the laces of her boots. “I didn’t see a car out there, where’d she park?”

Bobby hovered near by twisting the dirty bowl of his hat between his fingers. “Did I shoot her?”

“I don’t see any blood,” Sam pushed open her coat and swiped his hands over her ribs looking for wetness, prodded through her hair. “Maybe she just fainted.”

Dean stayed back in the kitchen with his arms crossed and just watched. Castiel stood a few feet away absently plucking at a fray in his blanket.

“Is she possessed?” Jo said, fingering the hilt of her knife.

“She’s not possessed,” Dean rubbed his cheek. “No black at the edges. I’d be able to see it if she were, even if the demon was hiding.”

Sam glanced at him, mouth compressed and his hands found the girl’s belt.

Looking back on it Dean would think it was funny. Sam bending over, loosening her clothing and the girl’s eyes come open. She looks confused at first, colorless from her faint, but then she goes very red in the face and her mouth is moving, hands trembling as she reaches up and presses her fingertips to Sam’s bruised cheek.

“Oh—“ Her voice is shaking; “Oh, what’d they do to you!” And then she notices where Sam’s hands are.

Dean expects screaming, expects one of the girls thin pointy knees to collide with surprising force, with his brother’s genitals, instead the girl arches her hips, lets her eyes fall closed and her fingers go into Sam’s hair with a hum; “Quick, before your brother gets back.”

Sam’s mouth falls open a little and he makes a hollow dumb sound in the back of his throat; “Uhhhh—“

Bobby blanches and Jo lets out a snort.

Becky’s head turns and she regards the other occupants of the room with wide slightly too big eyes. Her gaze lights on Jo and Ellen and her brows scrunch in something akin to disapproval before she turns doe eyes back to Sam.

Sam blinks and looks around nervously. He has his hands lifted, fingers curled into his palms like animal paws; “You—“ He clears his throat, “You can let go now.”

Becky’s lips compress and she turns somehow redder. “No,” Her fingers are twirling in Sam’s hair and if ever he had looked more uncomfortable Dean didn’t know about it.

“Should we leave you two alone for a few minutes?” Jo says in a strained voice, biting her lips to keep from laughing.

Sam says ‘No’, Becky says ‘Yes’.

Ellen clears her throat her, eyeing them uncomfortably; “Right, well, why don’t you start by telling us who you are?”

Becky drops her head back on her neck and looks toward Ellen with her nose wrinkled up; “Oh. I’m—I’m Becky, Becky Rosen… And you,” She wobbled her head forward again and Sam tried to duck back from her, managed somehow to slip out of the loop of her arms without losing too many hairs to her grabby fingers. “You’re Sam Winchester.”

Sam smoothed imaginary wrinkles from his clothes then crossed his arms. Stood with his thighs butting against Bobby’s desk so he could stay out of the girl’s reach, “Okay, and how do you know that?”

She sat up slowly, compulsively pushed her hands over her head, smoothing out her hair and tucking her clothes back into order; “Chuck sent me.”

“Chuck?” Again with the saying things together. Dean cleared his throat to chase the taste from his mouth.

Becky nodded, eyes on Sam again. “Chuck—Mister Edlund,” She giggled, “Said I was the only one who would believe him. He said I had to find you and your brother… Where is Dean?” Her fingers drummed excitedly against her knees.

Sam made that stupid noise again and turned to look at his brother, motioned with one rigid finger. “That’s Dean.”

Becky blinked… and blinked again. “Oh.”

Dean wrinkled his nose up. “What?”

Becky looked away and back again, “Nothing… you’re just—not what I expected.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She bobbed her head to the side and her brow wrinkled in something akin to a wince; “You’re just… a lot— _prettier_ than I expected.”

“Pretty? You think—“ He snorted. “I’m not pretty. Men aren’t ‘pretty’.”

Jo choked on a laugh. Dean thrust a finger at her and scowled, “You shut up!”

Ellen rolled her eyes and stepped forward extending her hand. “I’m Ellen Harvelle. That’s my daughter Jo and the grumpy looking old fart that shot at you is Bobby.”

Becky’s face seemed to fucking GLOW and her hands fluttered excitedly. She spoke quickly in a high pitched voice that was half excited giggling and half a whine. Dean could only pick out about half the words but he caught enough. “Number One Fan! All the books—“ Yeah, that was enough. He rubbed a twinge of discomfort from the bridge of his nose and looked around for the dog. He hadn’t seen her in a while and the realization that she hadn’t been constantly under his feet in the last few days was startling.

“Jo,” He called; “Where’s Sputnik?”

Jo’s brows knitted and she turned in a complete circle, peered under the desk and into the hall, “I don’t know, she was here a minute ago.”

“Great,” He huffed and pushed past Castiel on his way to the door, snagged a flashlight off the hall table and shuffled out into the yard.

He whistled low a few times, swept his light back and forth in search of her and when that didn’t work called her name in a hushed snarl. To let her know he meant business.

He walked to the area Becky had collapsed, peered into a few of the junkers but saw no sign of the dog.

Fifteen minutes more and a quick scan of the garage showed nothing and it was only as he was walking briskly toward Bobby’s back door again that he noticed the little white and gold blur in the driver’s window of the Impala.

“No.”

He turned his light toward the car and felt his hackles rise, like lightning about to strike. The flashlight flickered and grew incredibly bright.

Sputnik seemed to smile at him where she was shut up in the car and cocked her head to the side.

Dean felt it like a buzz under his skin. Like millions of bees wings. Like shock settling into his bones. He made a noise, knew he was making it but couldn’t stop it. A low hollow drone as he darted forward and yanked the car door open.

Sputnik pranced back and forth on the front seat and Dean dropped to his knees outside and felt around in the foot wells and the upholstery for damp patches. Instead he found dusty foot prints three sizes smaller than his own and when he slid behind the wheel his mirrors were not in alignment.

Sputnik pushed herself into his lap warily pawed at his chest, confused and frightened that he was still moaning under his breath.

His car.

That—that GIRL was in his CAR!

Not only that, she’d messed with his mirrors and played with the radio and fingered his cassettes. One of the last places on this planet that felt like his own and it had been invaded by a perky ‘Fan’ who’d practically felt his brother up.

Dean felt vaguely dirty, somehow violated and wrapped his arms around Sputnik’s neck while he fought to control his breathing.

0-0-0

Becky took her coffee sweet with lots of cream. She sat hunched on the sofa with her eyes darting frequently to Sam where he’d taken up a chair as far from her in the room as he could.

Even Bobby was eyeing her warily, standing in the door to the kitchen with his arms crossed rubbing the pads of his thumbs against his fingertips.

Becky looked at everything, commented that she had imagined the layout of the house different. That in her mind there had been another room downstairs and the salvage yard was laid out in hotdog style rows instead of the hamburger she had been expecting.

Castiel had asked what that meant but nobody had answered him.

Sam had asked where she’d parked her rental and Becky had replied that she’d parked on the side of the road about a quarter of a mile away, to throw off anybody who may or may not have been following her.

“Were you followed?”

“No.”

“How sure are you?”

She hummed; “Pretty sure, I mean I’ve got this—“ She produced a little sachet of thin suede tied with a piece of ribbon.

Sam eyed it warily; “Is that—“

“I told you,” She said, staring at him unblinking; “I’ve read all the books.”

Sam’s mouth was dry and he pushed himself up and went to the fridge for a beer. Felt unnerved turning his back on her, but couldn’t make himself keep looking at her. She kept staring at him like she wanted to dip him in chocolate.

Jo seemed to get a kick out of it and had asked about the books. Sam was pretty sure she’d found where Bobby had stowed them and he and Dean would not hear the end of it when she was finished.

Ellen treated the girl as impartially as she could. Asked most of the questions and got the vaguest answers. Becky, apparently, didn’t much care for Ellen or Jo. She tolerated Bobby, stared up at him like one might stare up at their grandfather and eyed Castiel with her brows pulled down, like she couldn’t quite figure out where he fit into this.

Dean came back inside with Sputnik trailing behind him when Sam had made it halfway through his beer. Dean’s shoulders were slumped dramatically and he had a listless, barely there look in his eyes. Sam caught his arm and pulled him back, hissed at him questioningly and didn’t complain when Dean took the bottle from his hands and downed it in two gulps.

“Your girlfriend was fucking with my rear view mirror.”

“What?”

“She was in my car, Sam. MY CAR!” He snarled it, barely audible and his incredulity made the kitchen lights flicker and buzz.

“Are you sure?”

“YES. She shut the dog up in there—she’s fuckin’ lucky Sputz didn’t piss on the upholstery or I’d make her clean it up with her hair.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Well, she came here for a reason.”

“Which is?”

Sam motioned toward the library and Dean scowled at him, adamant that he didn’t want to see the girl again, but Sam was insistent and Dean slunk into the room like a two-year-old awaiting punishment and took up a stubborn cross-armed stance at Castiel’s elbow.

Becky smiled at him and her cheeks went pink when she looked back to Sam but she spoke clearly in forced calm.

“Chuck wanted me to tell you that he had a vision… ‘The Michael Sword is in a castle on a hill made of forty-two dogs.’”

Sputnik sneezed loudly four times in a row and Becky looked down at her as if convinced the dog was infected with Ebola or some shit. All wrinkled nose and disapproval overlaid with unrepentant disgust.

Sam’s head bobbed forward on his neck a little. “And?”

Becky took another long drink of her coffee; “That’s it.”

And Castiel turned to look at them; “Michael’s sword is on earth?” His eyes were wide and although he was still pale and unhealthy looking, he seemed to thrum with energy.

Dean looked down at him and spoke at a quick clip; “Wait, his sword’s got his grace on it, right? Couldn’t that work? Could that be strong enough to take out Satan?”

“Yes. If you’re strong enough to withstand the backlash, then yes.”

“Backlash?”

“What happened in Ilchester was a small flare of grace. If you were to kill Lucifer the backlash would be catastrophic… I can’t guarantee you would survive. You’re Open enough that you might be burned out along with him.”

Dean didn’t even blink; “If it means ganking the devil, I say we go for it—“

“What if I did it,” Sam spoke firmly, casually.

Dean turned to him with his eyes wide; “No.”

“I didn’t feel much of anything of the flare, Dean. You almost died,” He met Castiel’s eyes evenly; “Would it still work if I did it—“

“You’re not doing it, Sam. No way—“

“Would you shut up for a minute and look at this logically? If there’s no need for you to play martyr, Dean then I’m not going to let you do it! If there’s a way to do this where neither of us die, I’m going for it. With or without your approval.”

Dean gaped for all of two seconds.

“It’s possible,” Castiel said. “You were unaffected by his presence, it’s possible the act wouldn’t cause any ill effects if you aren’t open to grace.”

“Could you do it?” Sam flipped his fingers; “Just curious.”

“I could. And it’s more than likely I would burn magnificently with grace and then explode.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot to his hairline.

Dean waved them both off; “No. No exploding,” He gave a hard shudder as if nauseated.

Bobby lifted his voice; “So this is our plan? Take the word of a man who wrote shitty fiction about you boys?”

“It wasn’t shitty fiction!” Becky sat her coffee cup down with an audible click; “It’s progressive and original and told with a no-nonsense air of professionalism!”

Bobby looked at her evenly with his eyebrow cocked up. “And what the hell have you been reading?”

Dean was sure Becky’s face went from pink to red to plum in less than two seconds and in spite of everything, he thought it was actually kind of funny.

0-0-0

Dean slipped Sam some of the Valerian root tea. Didn’t tell him until he was already droopy eyed and swaying in his seat that the ‘herbal’ wasn’t actually lemongrass and hyssop as he’d lead his brother to believe.

Sam, due to the herb, was too mellow to really be angry and fifteen minutes later was sprawled on his face in his too small bed upstairs in his underwear and socks sound asleep.

Dean felt rather smug about it and sat up with Bobby and Ellen and Jo going over and over the riddle of Chuck’s message trying to figure it out.

Castiel tried to help, paged through the books he hadn’t had the chance to read yet but he developed a chill from somewhere and Ellen made him take the sofa while they retired to the kitchen with their books and pulled the sliding doors shut.

Dean skimmed over the text but couldn’t focus, too much energy burning bright under his skin, both figurative and literal. The words chanted over and over and over in his head but all he could really see in his mind’s eye was Castiel, all he could feel was the angel’s waning energy loosely connected with his own. Fading even as he fed sips of it out.

Two thirty rolled around and Dean stood up, rubbed his face and slipped into the library, sought out Castiel’s outline on the sofa, Sputnik cuddled between his knees head on his thigh watching with bright brown eyes.

Castiel wasn’t asleep, even though he looked like he needed it. His eyes were dull, clouded by pain and weakness but they locked on to Dean as soon as he stepped through the door and didn’t waver.

Dean felt a lump growing in his throat, a hard knob of tension that refused to be swallowed or breathed around or coughed out. He moved forward slowly, unsure, nerves alight and settled on his behind in the floor at Castiel’s hip, wrapped his fingers around the angel’s wrist and turned his hand over to inspect the bandages spiraled around his forearm. It was a conscious effort opening himself up to the brush of Castiel’s grace. He had to focus on his breathing, on remaining calm and lax. He imagined, disturbingly enough, that this is what breast feeding must be like—chuckled tried not to compare the pull of Castiel against him to thirst or hunger. It was deeper than that, deeper than the mere physical.

“What’ll happen to you when me and Sam leave? Are you gonna be OK?”

His words come out thin like a whisper; “I don’t know.”

They cut as sharply as any knife and Dean looked down where his skin touched that of Castiel’s vessel. “Is there any way you can take enough to heal yourself all at once?”

“Not like this.”

“I didn’t ask that. ‘Is there a way to recharge yourself so you can heal up?’”

He takes a hitching breath and coughs a little as he exhales. “Yes.”

“Do it.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“The grace would lash out if I tried.”

“What is it?”

He doesn’t answer immediately, picks his words carefully; “A human soul I special. It’s not like the souls of animals or plants or the earth itself… A human’s soul has something MORE. Nobody really knows why, but God made humanity MORE. Your souls are powerful things. A human soul, comparatively, has more power within it than all the archangels combined.”

Dean feels something tingling at the base of his mind; “I think you’ve told me something like this before…” He raps his chest with his knuckles; “You did this to keep me from shattering because if I had it would have been like a nuclear explosion. But what does it have to do with anything?”

Castiel inhales with more care than before; “If I were to touch it, I could draw away some of the power into myself.”

“You want to touch my soul?”

“You asked what would ‘recharge’ me immediately. That’s what would do it.”

Dean’s lips compressed; “You’ve done it before?”

“Yes, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to infuse the fissures with grace.”

“Will it hurt?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember doing it.”

Dean snorted; “Oh, well that’s really reassuring.”

“It’s likely it will be excruciating. Your body is made to protect your soul, it would see the contact as an attack and register it as pain—“

“Which would make the grace go all attack dog, okay,” Breathe in and out, “What if I can keep it under control.”

“You can’t.”

“Like hell I can’t—“

Castiel met his eyes evenly; “You don’t—“

“Just do it already. I can keep it down.”

“Dean?”

**“Cas,”** the way he said it, the finality to his voice, the PRESENCE behind it. Castiel felt it, heard it with more than his borrowed human ears. He FELT it.

“I can do it.”

And for a moment he believed him, felt a thread of joy and hope pull tight in his chest and Castiel wondered if it was a blasphemy to have faith like this in a human.

“Just… yanno, strictly platonic soul touching… right? No slippin’ one past the goalie while my eyes are closed, OK?”

“I don’t—“

Dean’s face flushed and he shook his head quickly, shifted closer and glanced around to make sure nobody had seen; “Just get it over with.”

Castiel looked up at him with wide blue eyes, surprise written plainly on his features, he almost seemed to hesitate, fitted his right hand against Dean’s chest and his left at the back of his neck.

The pressure increased, like Castiel was pulling him down but neither of them moved. The hand on his chest seemed to push UP against his ribs and at the same time something inside of him surged down to meet it.

To say it hurt would have been an understatement.

The world whited out and somewhere in the background he heard a clattering noise, like the sliding doors being forced open. Popping and crackling like his back after a night on the floor. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, was only aware of an invasion into himself and an overwhelming sense of revulsion at the contact.

The grace in him surged up and wrapped around what had wedged itself deep into his core, SQUEEZED and he cried out, heard it—FELT it.

The intrusion withdrew almost violently and the next instant the world swam into focus and Dean found himself lying on his back in front of Bobby’s desk with Ellen bending over him a hand to each cheek worry etched onto her face.

“It’s alright. You’re alright,” She pushes his hair back and pastes a smile on her face, all copper and gold at the edges.

Bobby appears at her elbow, purses his lips and asks in a gruff voice; “I ought ta’ put you over my goddamned knee!”

Ellen pushed him away and rocked back on her heels, let Dean push himself up into a sitting position, eyes going immediately to Castiel—He was sitting up, prodding gingerly at the wound in his chest. It looked drastically different than it had just that morning. Where there had been an ugly black scab was now red scar tissue, dimpled in the center and shaped like an inverted teardrop.

There was color in Castiel’s face again that was not put there by fever and when he looked up his eyes—

His eyes were blue, as they had always been, but there was something—

It stole Dean’s breath all over again because as close as the color of Castiel’s vessel’s eyes had been to those Dean remembered His Cas’ being, they had always seemed somehow different. But there was light there now, the whorls of some distant galaxy and Dean felt lost to it, heard his heart beating hard in his chest and the hitch of his breath.

Castiel’s brows pulled down curiously.

—Confusionuncertaintydoubtfearnervousnesshope—

Dean felt it like spider webs brushing against his face, not quite there but stronger than steel. Felt and gone like a cool breeze.

“Did it—“ He cleared his throat, “Did it work?”

Castiel didn’t look away, “Not entirely… You don’t have enough control, but I was able to draw enough to heal my vessel, for that I’m grateful.”

“So, you’re angelfied again?”

He turns and regards Bobby silently, then looks at the floor and shakes his head; “That kind of pain, it’s impossible for a human to retain enough of their mental faculties to resist fighting back.”

Dean rubbed his sternum and scowled at him.

“Dean withstood more than I believed him capable.”

His mouth opened to form a reply but Ellen cut him off; “Well, we can’t find anything about a hill of dogs in any of Bobby’s books and—“

Dean blinked and blinked again, pushed himself unsteadily to his feet and made for the stairs.

“Where’d he take off to?” Ellen peered up the stairs after him, listened to the sound of his feet on the floorboards.

“Maybe he had to go to the bathroom?” Jo supplied with an exaggerated shrug.

Bobby rolled his eyes, “Alright, I get it, I’ll fix the damned toilet in the morning!” and he practically stomped back into the kitchen and took his seat at the table with a muffled grumble of irritation.

Dean came down the stairs two at a time with a broad grin on his face, his father’s journal in one hand and a lightly worn business card in the other. “Dad had storage lockers all over the country, kept ‘em paid up through over-seas bank accounts,” He slapped the card down on the kitchen table. “Castle Storage, forty-two Rover Hill—“

Bobby looked up at him agape; “You mean John had the sword the whole damned time!”

“Looks like it.”

“And he never bothered to, oh, I don’t know—MENTION THAT HE HAD A FUCKING ANGEL SWORD?”

Dean winced at the ceiling; “He kind of had us on a ‘need to know’ basis with the things he collected. Unless I had to deal with it, I never asked.”

“Well you should have!”

Dean pressed his lips together tightly and looked away, felt the words and the pressure of Bobby’s anger like a physical presence expanding between them. It became so oppressive so quickly he took a step back and folded in on himself.

Jo, observant as she was, stepped into the kitchen, thumbs hooked in the rear pockets of her jeans; “Well, now we know where it is, so what’s the plan?”

Bobby pulled his hat off and scrubbed his fingertips into his eyes tiredly; “Hell if I know…” He sighed and looked to the angel standing in the doorway, shirt still opened, watching the exchange with silent alertness; “What do we do now?”

Castiel flicked his gaze to Dean, unable to meet the hunter’s gaze he wet his lips and spoke calmly; “We would need a box, or form of containment to transport it in without alerting Michael of it being moved. It’s likely that the sword was put there intentionally not just by John Winchester, but by the Host.”

“Why not keep it with Michael?”

“An archangel’s sword is a powerful weapon, Lucifer was not the only angel to defect. Michael, as the Cheifest of the Archangels, possesses the strongest weapon. If another angel were to take it they could conceivably overthrow heaven. It’s possible the sword is hidden, which would explain why no one knew it was missing. Michael likely hid it to protect it from being used against heaven.”

“So, you need a box to put this box in?”

“Yes.”

“How big of a box?”

Castiel was quiet, thoughtful for a moment then held his hands at about shoulder width apart, “The container would have to be close fitting to prevent the blade from resonating on itself and tearing the box apart. Likely made of consecrated iron.”

“So a heavy box,” Bobby sighed and rubbed his face. “That’d take me a few days—“

“A shroud would work just as well.”

“Shroud?” Dean’s nose wrinkled.

“The burial shroud of a lesser saint should suffice. Ideally a higher saint, but I’m trying to be realistic given our time constraints and my depleted condition.”

Bobby’s mouth was still hanging open and he looked between the angel and Dean a few times. “Is he serious?”

Dean squinted, peered at the color of Castiel and found nothing disingenuous. “Yep.”

“Where the hell are we gonna find the burial shroud of a saint!”

“Does it have to be an Old saint?” Ellen tilted her chin up where she was leaned against the door facing.

“There’s new saints?” Dean snorted.

Ellen worked her tongue at the backs of her teeth; “There’s saints for everything, look it up. What I’m asking is; does it have to be an old saint?”

Bobby rubbed his face.

Castiel shifted his shoulders and crossed his arms, eyes locked on Ellen.

“Saint Imogen the Triumphant. Hundred-year-old old woman canonized to Sainthood the week after her death by a church in Nebraska which then disbanded two weeks later because the priest was caught playing ‘Doctor’ with the organist.”

Bobby snorted; “And how do you know this?”

“It was in the newspaper the same day as Jo’s Birth Announcement… Her daddy wanted to name her Imogen but I shot that down so fast—”

Dean snorted and gave Jo a sidelong look; “Imogen.”

“Stuff it, Winchester.”

Castiel ignored them; “Where was she buried?”

“Six miles north of where the Roadhouse used to be, I can be back by noon.”

Bobby pushed up to his feet and settled his hat on his head. “I’ll go with you.”

“It’s fine,” Ellen was already moving toward the door, she swung on her jacket and patted her pockets looking for her keys; “You just got back. Get some sleep, me and Jo’ll handle it.”

Bobby opened his mouth to protest but the Harvelles were already going. He spluttered after them ineffectually and resigned himself with a huff. Their car stared in the driveway and after it had pulled away Bobby stomped outside again with a grumble about deer proofing his garden.

Dean wanted to point out that it was two AM but didn’t have the energy, he glanced at Castiel and rubbed at the corner of his eye; “You should get some sleep too.”

“I don’t sleep.”

“Oh, so all the drooling you’ve been doing on the couch cushions the past few weeks is, what, normal angel behavior?”

Castiel narrowed his eyes and his color flared a little.

“What, need me to read you a bedtime story?”

The angel’s mouth narrowed and his jaw clenched. When Dean left the kitchen with a shake of his head Castiel was still standing there with his arms crossed, the energy of him pulled close and tight and defensive.

Dean just shook his head and shuffled upstairs, rolled himself up like a burrito in his blankets and tried to pretend that tomorrow he wasn’t going to go and break into his dad’s old storage locker to steal the sword of an archangel.

At first there was nothing, blank dreamlessness.

Then it’s not.

The world around him is dim, soft and warm, lit with gentle amber light that comes from nowhere and everywhere, somewhere above him he can’t seem to pinpoint in the gloom. The world beneath him is soft, comfortable, like cotton sheets washed with loving hands.

 

There’s a window to his left, one of those four pane deals like kids draw in crayon pictures with thin gauzy curtians. The window’s closed but the curtians move like there’s a breeze.

 

Later he’ll think it’s strange that he noticed the world around him before he realized what was happening TO him.

 

In fact, the only reason he becomes aware of it is because there’s suddenly a touch to his cheek, the backs of strong knuckles brushing against his skin in something like tenderness. He gasps, chokes and stares up with wide eyes at the face looming over him.

 

Cas is looking at him and his eyes are bright, flicker and shine like distant stars.

 

There is panic. Bright and hot and sour like bile in his chest, because now that he realizes Cas is on top of him he realizes other things. His left hand is pinned and his legs are hitched up, tucked to Cas’s sides—He’s naked and their hips are flush. He—Cas is IN him and holding him down—IN HIM.

 

His head digs back into the softness of pillows and a scream clogs his throat, images of blood and fire and painbloodviolenceHELL— flashBURN in his head. Claws ripping into him, bruised flesh torn and ruined—FilthdirtybrokenUSED—

 

“Dean…” That touch again, barely there, just brushing against his skin, eyes bluejustright and never changing.

 

It lingers, seethes below the surface but now it seems faded, dreamlike. Dean breathes quickly, whimpering sips of air that don’t do any good but he can’t draw anything deeper because he feels so CRUSHED.

 

Cas’s head leans to the side and the penumbra of light shifts with him, seems to follow him and the longer Dean stares at him, expects him to change and HURT and violate… The more the shapes against this light come into focus until he’s staring upward breathlessly for a completely different reason.

 

He had described the shadow of Castiel’s wings in his head as being similar to those of a dead hawk, untidy and sharp looking… The shapes now were something different. Still very much raptor like, there was now a smooth seamlessness, a shape like wings but composed of something else entirely. They were mantled back like a canopy of some sort, shielding him from the darkness pushing in from all sides.

 

Cas touches him, a simple, repetitive wash of his fingers to Dean’s cheek and temple. It feels like someone’s taken that small twist of warmth that used to burrow into his chest when he witnesses a kindness and solidified it into that gentle caress, painting it slow like a salve into him once more, filling the empty craggy places inside him like blood in an open wound. It makes him feel supremely aware of all the harshness and pain he’s experienced in this exact position with something shaped like Cas. Makes the raw ache in him more acute because he can’t push it down, can’t pretend it isn’t there.

 

He’s vulnerable like this, bare and open. He’s afraid, still so afraid but this doesn’t feel like brutality, of course some of the worst torture was disguised as kindness. Dean knows that well unfortunately and he can’t trust it, can’t believe it. Demons are infinitely patient. When they know they can break you in new and exciting ways, they’ll do whatever it takes, for however long it will take. Build up your trust just to break it down again only to build it up and rip it apart.

 

He rationalized that it’s like being in an abusive relationship, only there’s no hope of escape or your partner ever killing you, it will literally go on forever and ever and ever without end. It gets to the point that the constant unending agony is preferable to the stillness, the anticipation, because you KNOW it is going to start again, it’s only a matter of time and the ‘kindness’ hurts worse only because it gives you hope that they’re not just doing it so you’ll break so pretty for them and lose a little more of yourself.

 

But… this feels so similar to something experienced in a dream. That—that VOID in his head where the bubble he’d been prodding for months used to be rears its head again, gaping and dark and SCREAMING. The memories are right there, waiting to gain strength and emerge like botfly larvae. He doesn’t know what’s in there and it scares the shit out of him. What if it is worse than what he already remembers? What if this all is a ploy, another punishment in disguise?

 

Hoplessly, helplessly, he wants to believe, wants to trust that this isn’t going to end like all the others even though he knows in his gut that it will. Simply because he doesn’t deserve this peace, doesn’t deserve kindness or mercy. The souls always scream and cry as if that will make a difference.

 

“It’s alright,” He moves forward, presses his lips to Dean’s brow and holds there for a second, soothes with the coolness of his flesh. Like a balm the heat recedes, the darkness fades back and Dean is left tense and trembling and all too aware that he’s open and not alone in his body.

 

His right hand slowly unclenches from the sheets, shakes as he lifts it and finds the firm flex of muscle under the skin of Cas’s shoulder, touches—scared to touch— and the contact is solid. He digs his nails in but Cas doesn’t flinch, pulls back only to brush another kiss to Dean’s cheek, each eyelid as he closes them and his lips when they part for breath.

 

It doesn’t feel sexual, feels like forgiveness, like a cleansing. Cool showers on hot summer nights, a damp cloth on a fevered brow.

 

He weeps with it because this is a dream and he can’t stop it from happening, wants it to happen because it feels somehow cathartic, like breaking things is a relief in the waking world or how painful it had been to talk to Ellen days ago, but good at the same time. He weeps because knows how much it will hurt when the demon’s fun is over.

 

Cas shushes him but it doesn’t sound like a command, doesn’t sound condescending like when Sam does it, it sounds like wind carrying away the scent of smoke. Like the rustle of new leaves shaking off winter’s chill or water flowing ever onward.

 

He stills, scratches because the acknowledgement of his pain hurts maybe more than the actual ache and he doesn’t understand it. Why isn’t he hurting? Why isn’t he pinnedbleedingtorn? He refuses to believe, bites and scratches but Cas doesn’t retaliate. He skims a hand down Dean’s side, touches reverently, leans forward and whispers into the shell of his ear while Dean’s nails tear into his back and the base of his wings—“It’s OK…”

 

The forgiveness hurts more than the remembrance of sin because it is given freely even though it is not deserved, a gift with no expectation of return.

 

“It’s OK.”

 

He kisses back because he can’t take it anymore, just wants it to be over— tastes salt and it feels like absolution.

 

There is no pain.

 

He wakes up on his back, arched upward amid a slow deep release. Lies there pulling in quick uneven breaths with his eyes squeezed shut and his arms over his head, one in his hair, one curled like claws against the headboard. His face is wet, feels hot, his throat is tight and he’s shaking.

 

It’s only after he’s sucked in a few deep breaths that he realizes he’s had the first orgasm that actually felt like an orgasm since he came back and there’s a sticky cooling mess in his underwear.

 

He should probably feel embarrassed, he hasn’t really had an honest, pleasurable wet dream since he was eighteen, but he doesn’t, just lays there for a minute waiting out the aftershocks then pushes the blankets down, peels up his waistband and stares for a minute to make sure he’s seeing what he’s actually seeing and he’s not bleeding out.

 

He feels disgusting, nauseated. Remembers the sensation of blood under his nails and the look on His Cas’s face. Calm and accepting and open with so much forgiveness.

 

He feels cracked open at the seams. Wrung out and left to rot.

 

Castiel is sitting at the breakfast table when Dean comes down after a cold shower. His eyes are blue and Dean can’t look at them. Forces the memories down, forces the phantom sensations down and away from himself. Tries not to think.

 

The angel gives him funny looks, pinched brows and a slow tilt of his head.

 

Sam, at least, is predictable. He’s angry that Dean had slipped him the valerian root, but he’s pleased when Bobby tells him about the storage locker.

 

“That—that’s fantastic! When are we leaving?”

 

Bobby says something about Ellen and Jo coming back around noon, pushes back from the table and goes to the sink, stares out the window over his yard and sips his coffee with a shuttered expression of mild annoyance.

 

Sam eats all the bacon. Not that Dean had put more than a forkful of eggs into his mouth, he’d mostly just been pushing the food around and avoiding Castiel’s gaze.

 

“I’m gonna need to get some things out of the trunk. Dean, where are the keys?”

 

“You’re not driving.”

 

“No, I just need to get some things out of the trunk before Bobby and I leave.”

 

Dean’s head snaps up and his fork clatters against his plate; “You and Bobby.”

 

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

 

“No.”

Sam’s eyebrows lifted.

“You’re not leaving without me.”

“Dean—“

“Look, I’ll give you a free pass for Colorado, OK? I couldn’t see anything and I would have just been in the way, but this time? No. I can see, I haven’t had a fit in weeks, I’m GOING.”

Sam’s expression contracts; “Fine,” He spits the word like it’s vile and goes for the door, shoves his gigantic feet into his equally gigantic shoes and flings the door open. He pauses in the doorway, squinting; “Deer’s back—“

Bobby practically throws his coffee cup into the sink, whips out his little stub nosed pistol and lunges out the door with a snarl.

He fires all six rounds, they twang and thunk into the stacks of cars but the deer has already ducked around the old caravans and galloped off. “HORSE SHIT!”

Dean picks up Sam’s coffee cup and downs the dregs, pushes to his feet and peers out the door; “Yanno, maybe next year you should try planting stuff around the house instead of between the junkers.”

“I can’t! Half of those damned herbs’ll get you arrested in South Dakota!”

 

Dean snorted out half a laugh; “Deer eating all your ganja?”

 

“Tomatoes actually and chamomile and capensis—and they’re trampling the ‘papaver somniferum’.”

 

“Papaver what?”

 

“Less you know the better.”

 

Dean held up his hands innocently.

 

0-0-0

Jo and Ellen returned twenty minutes earlier than predicted. They were both dusted with graveyard dirt and neither of them smelled exactly ‘Fresh’ but Ellen smiled and presented a lumpy garbage bag at arm’s length. “One burial shroud of a lesser saint.”

Castiel took the bag and opened it—

Bobby leaned back in his chair and twisted his face up, hoping his moustache filtered the stink.

Sam made a nauseated noise in his throat and Dean backed up a few paces; “Yeah, that’s not goin’ in my car.”

“If you wish to transport the blade without alerting Michael you don’t have a choice.”

Jo exhaled loudly and disappeared into the bathroom; “I’ll get the Febreze.”

“I don’t care how much you dump in there, it ain’t gonna kill that stink,” Bobby pushed out of his chair and took the bag, tied it in a secure knot and put it outside on the porch then took a long moment to stare out toward his herb garden.

Ellen snorted and made for the sink, soaped her hands and started scrubbing; “Deer still hanging around?”

Bobby muttered.

Dean took a seat at the table to put on his boots; “It’s got the munchies.”

Ellen laughed under her breath; “Aw, come on, Singer, lighten up. Deer’s gotta get its jollies somehow.”

Bobby huffed out a breath; “I want steak.”

“You’ve got half a freezer full of steak!”

“Not deer steak… Haven’t had a good deer steak in a year and a half.”

Sam bobbed his head to the side; “He does make a mean deer steak.”

Dean hummed in agreement and pushed to his feet; “Noon, lookin’ at twenty-four hours on the road.”

Bobby flapped a hand at them. “I’m out.”

“What?” Sam genuinely sounded hurt.

“We just spent a week chasing down one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

Sam looked at him as if asking what his point was.

Bobby huffed out an exaggerated breath; “I’m OLD! I’m tired! Apocalypse or not you boys don’t need me gimpin’ along behind you when you’re stealin’ a sword out from under an angel’s nose!”

“Angels don’t have noses,” Castiel didn’t look up from his coffee cup.

Dean found himself looking at him, skin feeling waxy; “Yeah, that’s not terrifying at all.”

Bobby leaned his hip against the countertop; “The point is, you don’t need me for this. I’m not all rib branded like you are, if they’ve warded the damned thing they’ll see me coming a mile away.”

“He’s right you know,” Ellen scuffed a towel over her hands; “You two are invisible to angels, you can sneak in and out and they’ll never know.”

“And if Dean’s grace sets off an alarm?”

“It won’t,” Dean practically snarled at his brother; “I’ve got a handle on it now.”

Sam didn’t look convinced.

“We’re wasting time, just—get your gear and let’s GO!”

Sam cast one more look at Bobby then gave Dean a hard stare as he left the room.

Ellen waited until Sam was out of hearing range before she spoke. “You OK, kid?”

He rubbed the tension growing between his brows; “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine. You didn’t eat—“

“Not hungry.”

“Texture or taste?”

“What?” He looked up.

She rolled her eyes and turned to the fridge pulled out a couple slices of bread and cheese, “Get some juice and sit down.”

“I’m not hungry—“

“Then you can drink your juice and take the sandwiches with you.”

Dean sat and drank the juice while Bobby gave him a subtle grin over his coffee mug. He purposefully avoided looking at Castiel, still felt vaguely slimy under his skin, fought to keep the memory of waking up as he had, shoved down deep and out of mind.

When Ellen put two sandwiches in front of him he ate them and tried to ignore how she watched him, how his mind tingled when she stepped closer and pulled at his hair.

“Getting’ kinda long, ain’t it?”

He ignored it, barely chewed before he swallowed and let some of the tension bleed out with the comb of her fingers against his scalp. If he noticed Castiel watching with a curious expression on his face Dean didn’t show it and when Sam came down stairs with their bags a few minutes later he pushed to his feet and let his thumb pluck at Ellen’s sleeve in thanks as he moved toward the door.

Sam was standing with the passenger door open and a dumb grin on his face when Dean came out of the house. Then the grin faded; “Hey, woah—“

Dean heard the screen door slap shut behind him and turned only to find Castiel standing too close. He took a deliberate step back and looked the angel up and down. He was wearing a borrowed pair of jeans and boots, a t-shirt and flannel with a few buttons missing and one of Bobby’s old Woolrich coats.

Strictly speaking it was too warm outside for the coat, but this time of year you could never be too careful.

“Cas— What’re you doing?”

“Following you.”

“Yeah… Why?”

“I have to remain in close contact with you to continue recharging my grace.”

Dean felt the grilled cheese trying to crawl back up his throat. “Oh.”

0-0-0

Dean wouldn’t admit it. To ANYONE. But he didn’t like not being behind the wheel. It wasn’t just because it was his car either. Dean also, as of late, had realized that if he wasn’t constantly watching the road and maneuvering the car, or trying to sleep, he became terribly—uncontrollably—car sick.

He would never say it aloud. Never even think it fully when Castiel was present, but there it was, an unsettled, hot twinge in his middle that had nothing to do with ulcers or how little he’d had to eat in the past two days.

“I can drive you know,” Dean balanced his jaw on his fist and squinted out at the world.

“You drove all day,” Sam hit the low-beam switch and focused on the highway, the lights of Pittsburgh flipping past as he followed road signs back to the interstate. “First time out After… Don’t push yourself.”

“I’m not.”

“Try to sleep.”

“I can’t.”

“You didn’t even try,” Sam rolled his eyes and glanced into the rearview at the back seat. “Castiel’s asleep and he’s still adamant that angels don’t sleep.”

“Fully charged angels don’t,” Dean eyed the passing cars and litter in the median. “He’s suckin’ fumes.”

“Maybe you could give him a little more—“

“Tried that… If he pushes too hard it fights back.”

Sam snorted; “Maybe he should try foreplay,” He winced even as he finished speaking and bit his tongue; “Sorry.”

Dean glared at him but said nothing.

He didn’t sleep.

Couldn’t. He was both too nervous and too tired to sleep. What if he Dreamed again. What if he woke up with wet boxers and Sam staring at him.

Dean didn’t know what would be worse, dreaming of Alistair or Cas.

Sam clicked on the radio, kept it turned low and didn’t complain when Dean got tired of the easy listening and popped in Zeppelin II.

Sputnik snorted in her sleep curled at Dean’s feet and Castiel grunted as if answering her.

For all Dean knew, maybe he was.

0-0-0

The building was tall, dark and somehow ominous looking. Dean thought it fit his father’s personality perfectly, his skin tingled and the stink of the street after rain was overwhelming. He crouched in the open door and gripped Sputnik by her chubby face and made her look at him, PUSHED a little as he spoke hoping she understood him.

“Don’t let anyone but me, Sam or Cas near the car, OK?” Then as an afterthought, “Don’t piss in the car either. You don’t piss in the car I’ll buy you some KFC, capiche?”

She thumped her tail and tried to lap him in the face. Sam laughed, the bitch.

Dean smelled it as soon as they got off the elevator.

His stomach bubbled and his hands shook a little as he drew his gun. Kept it pressed to his thigh lest there be security cameras.

Castiel wasn’t as subtle. His wrist twisted and a slender silver blade slid out of his sleeve. It glowed and sizzled in Dean’s periphery and Sam eyed it with an air of curiosity as he took up a low, ready stance on the other side of the door.

Key in lock, pop—Door slides—

Blood. Sulfur, ASHES.

Dean curls his lip up in disgust and stares at the bodies on the ground, the swirls of ash under their faces. It’s difficult to get into the room without stepping in it, but he manages. Waves Sam and Cas in with a hiss of pent up breath. “Clear.”

Castiel has his preverbal hackles up. “Something’s not right—“

Sam toes over one of the bodies and makes a sound of disgust; “Their faces are all burned—“

And the air around them crackles.

“Hello, Dean!”

The world tunnels out and all Dean can see is that smarmy face in the charcoal suit.

Zechariah lifts a hand and flicks it, the door slides shut behind them with a bang.

Castiel steps forward, sword held in his fist—loose but ready.

“Castiel!” Zechariah wags a finger at him, “You’ve been very—VERY naughty.”

“I won’t let you hurt Dean,” His voice rumbles and Dean can feel it in his chest.

Zechariah tilts his head, surprised; “Hurt Dean? Now, why would I want to do that?”

Dean bares his teeth and levels his gun in the bastard’s face; “Oh, I’ve got a surprise for you,” He breathes deep and focuses, opens up those little vein like pathways in himself and lets the grace flood into his hands, through his fingers and through the metal of his gun. It heats under his hands and for an instant he fears the bullets exploding in the clip but they don’t and when he exhales the weapon SHINES in his hand.

Zechariah eyes it, takes a small step to the side, as do the two others behind him. “You know someone could get hurt with that thing.”

“That’s the general idea, asswipe.”

Zechariah smiles, hands up and empty—it happens in a fraction of a second, a simple click of his fingers and Dean’s gun flies backward out of his hands, catches him in the cheek and skids off into the dark.

Dean hears other resounding clatters and turns, hand over the growing bruise and stares at his brother and Castiel, both of which are now disarmed.

Zechariah smiles brightly and lets out an exaggerated sigh of relief; “That’s better.”

“How did you find us?” Sam was breathing heavily, inching closer and closer to a row of various swords and knives on hooks against one of the fenced off partitions in the room.

Zechariah shrugged and folded his hands; “We knew you’d be here, it was just a matter of time.”

“How? We didn’t tell anyone.”

Zechariah’s head bobbed to the side a little indecisively; “Yes and no, but only the people we wanted to know knew the Michael Sword would be here,” He glanced down at the demons, “And them, but there’s no sense leaving loose ends, is there.”

Dean’s brows pulled together and he turned his head, eyed the bodies littering the floor between overturned shelves, felt bile rise up his throat when he recognized two of their ruined faces from the service station. Hands gripping and tearing, faces twisted and warped to black eyed wretchedness.

“You… You were in on it? What they did to me?”

He sighs, as if he’s gone through this scenario a hundred times and has found himself repeating information; “I told you months ago that we had to nip this little issue in the bud before it escalated,” His eyes seem to shift and taken in ALL of Dean, “Now what should have been a minor inconvenience is a major problem.”

The scraper in Bobby’s garage—the burning GLOW of it’s edge when Zechariah had appeared before Sandover. It had blazed just like his gun had, hot and SHINING with grace.

Dean felt his mouth curl up into a grin and his hands lowered; “You can’t hurt me.”

Zechariah stepped close, peered down his nose with watery eyes that seemed lit from within. “Don’t be so sure…”

Sam made a loud snuffling noise and Dean glanced at him, saw the purpose in his brother’s gaze, saw how close he’d managed to get too the blades hanging from their little hooks in neat, organized little rows.

Grace… An angel’s blade will shine with grace.

Which one? Sam’s eyes said. Which one is it!

Dean looked around, heart pounding… and saw nothing in the room even so much as glittering aside from his own gun and Castiel’s sword, wedged as it was in the side of a coffin sitting atop an old hospital gurney.

Zechariah’s brows pulled down and he turned his glare to Sam—and huffed out a laugh; “You didn’t actually think the Michael Sword was a REAL SWORD, did you?”

Dean’s throat closed up and he choked on his own breath.

Zechariah clapped; “To humanity!” He laughed again, truly amused and was suddenly very close to Dean, too close for comfort but not close enough that Dean could attack.

“Alright,” Zechariah let out a long cold breath and displayed his palms; “We might have planted that little bit of prophecy in Chuck’s skull, but it happened to be true. We DID lose the Michael Sword. We truly couldn’t find it.”

Dean’s eyes moved quickly, checked each of the three angels opposite him for anything that could be the sword. Anything—

“—Until now. You’ve just hand delivered it to us.”

Dean blinked, looked to Castiel in his frayed shirt and too big jeans, Sam with a dumb lost expression on his stupid face. He even looked down at himself and felt compelled to check his pockets.

Zechariah steps forward an hooks two fingers under Dean’s chin and tilts it up. He’s Smiling, eyes like silver holes in his head; “It’s you chucklehead… You’re the Michael Sword.”

He feels Castiel move, step back and the angel’s diminished grace flares hot and cold all at once. There is chatter in Dean’s head, shock and horror and understanding that rings bone deep—deeper.

_No—Oh, Father, no._

Dean swallows and his throat clicks. His mind races but his thoughts only circle like vultures waiting to pick his bones clean.

“You didn’t think you could actually KILL Lucifer, did you?” He says it like John had once said ‘You didn’t think you could actually fly did you?’ This hurts just as much for some strange reason, makes him feel twelve years old again with a towel tied around his neck. Makes him feel small and helpless and stupid.

“You simpering wad of insecurity and self-loathing?” Zechariah takes a step back and rubs his fingers together as if trying to rid them of some greasy discharge. “No… You’re just a human, Dean. And a pathetic one at that.”

His voice cracks; “I’m nobody’s weapon.”

Zechariah snorts, “Maybe that was too strong a word… You’re more like a—receptacle.”

Dean shakes his head, “No.”

“It’s not something you can deny, Dean. You ARE. It’s what you were born to be, it’s in your DNA… You’re CHOSEN, Dean! It’s a great honor!”

Dean remembers Jimmy again, how the man’s faith had been crushed the moment he said ‘yes’. Dean can’t even turn his head and look at Castiel in that moment, feels sick thinking of Jimmy Novak stuck in there, voiceless, helpless, nothing but a scrap of fog against his ‘Purpose’, his ‘HONOR’.

“Life as an angel condom… Yeah—Think I’ll pass.”

Zechariah exhales and gives his head a shake, looks vaguely disappointed; “Joking… you’re always joking,” He steps close—much MUCH too close, and with a wrinkle of disgust on his nose, brushes dust and a few stray dog hairs from Dean’s jacket lapel. “All you have to do, is say ‘Yes’ and the devil is as good as gone… Speak carefully, Dean. You wouldn’t want to upset me.”

Dean bares his teeth, feels himself shaking and tries to remember when he went to the bathroom last and if he should be worried that he doesn’t feel like he has to at the moment; “You can’t hurt me… You try and what I got’ll rip you apart.”

Zechariah nods once, purses his lips; “Well, you’re right about one thing… That grace you’ve got is a problem,” He doesn’t look Dean in the eye, just drums the fingers of one hand against Dean’s chest while his other grips his shirt and keeps him still; “If I were to cause you harm, it would lash out… Normally it would be like throwing frozen peas at a brick wall… But by some _fluke_ you not only have grace, but you’ve learned how to use it. More than that though, you’ve figured out how to use the power of your soul to make it stronger. So, sadly, no… I’m not going to hurt you,” Zechariah lifts his head, bare inches from Dean—and SMILES. Dean feels the urge to bite him but reigns it in, just barely; “I’m not going to lay a finger on you…” He makes a ‘L’ shape with his finger and thumb and points it toward Sam; “But I can do anything I want to them,” And his wrist moves, his finger finds Castiel and the dick has the audacity to make a noise like a laser firing in a seventies sci-fi.

Castiel goes down with a grunt, a quiet thing considering Zechariah’s just blown a hole in the flesh above his hip with imaginary angel bullets.

Dean flinches, feels it like static electricity against his own skin, a sudden POP! He half expects to feel the pain himself, knows what it’s like, has the dull memory of being shot glowing like a hot coal in his mind, tensing the muscles of his abdomen. But he doesn’t feel it. He’s not in pain, even if his heart ramps up and his breath quickens and his skin tingles like he is. The constant warmth of Castiel’s presence is pulsating, sensation flowing with it, whirling and swirling like a pool drain.

Castiel is hurting and Dean knows it, can FEEL it, and rage bubbles like acid in his belly.

Zechariah turns his index finger toward Sam, smile still on his smug face; “So, Winchester, all I need from you is one word.”

Dean feels himself shaking, remembers Jimmy muttering how it was like being chained to a comet—remembers camping out with Sam in the nineties to watch the comets fly overhead. Massive, cold and fiery. Imagines one residing within himself and equates it to a violation. A POSSESSION and he—he can’t. He can’t go through that again— “No.”

“No?”

Dean shakes his head a little, feels crushed under the pressure of Zechariah’s aura, the subdued unforgivable PRESENCE of him just nine inches away. “No.”

His finger lifts and he doesn’t bother making the sound this time but there is a noise—a wet crunching crack like noise. Dean’s heard—and felt—it before and Sam’s legs fold, drop him suddenly and heavily to the floor.

Sam lands half on his back half on his side with a gasp of shock, mutters; fuck—OH FUCK! In a high panicked voice and claws at his thighs. His lips have gone pale and sweat beads quickly on his brow.

Dean can feel his heart hammering behind his ribs. Can taste fear like bile in his throat but he can’t. He WON’T; “Sam’s had a broken leg before. Answer’s still no.”

Zechariah tilts his head; “That wasn’t his legs, Dean…”

Something cold slithers into Dean’s stomach but he doesn’t dare move, doesn’t dare turn his head or his resolve will crumble. It’s OK. Everything’s fine.

“You humans. Always thinking like nobody can hear you,” He wrings a finger in his ear, “It’s sad. Really sad,” He gives a nod, looks all too much the enthusiastic businessman Dean first saw him as. Expensive pressed suit and fresh even manicure. Smug and smarmy and holier-than-thou.

Zechariah nods toward Sam with a tip of his bald head; “Now. Dean… Why don’t you explain to your brother why he’s going to be spending the rest of his pathetic life paralyzed from the chest down?”

Dean clenches his teeth, feels himself trembling, numb and nauseous and inundated by frantic thoughtnoise—part of him wishes he’d let Castiel teach him how to tune it out but it’s too late now. His skin is crawling and he can feel the grace inside himself building and building like hydraulic pressure.

Behind him Sam is making weak gasping noises and his hands are twitching in the front of his shirt. “Dean—Dean—“

Dean doesn’t turn; “No.”

“You’re a heartless bastard, you know that? I just crushed your little brother’s spine and you’re not even going to look at him?”

He clenched his jaw and didn’t move, didn’t look away.

Zechariah blinks once and steps back, adjusting his tie, like this whole thing is straining his reserves. “You’re trying my patience, Dean. Don’t make this worse. Just say ‘yes’, accept Michael and let’s be done with this.”

He feels himself trembling but he doesn’t move. Won’t let himself move.

“I’m not going to ask nicely again… Say ‘yes’—or I’ll let him bleed to death,” He lifts his hand, ohsogently toward Sam and clicks his fingers.

It’s sudden. Like a flower blooming. A bright rose against the fabric of Sam’s jeans, spreading out beneath him. He looks up and meets Dean’s eyes in shock, pupils wide and skin ashy pale.

“Ooh,” Zechariah clicks his tongue, “Intestinal hemorrhage. Not pretty,” He turns and meets Dean’s eyes again, “Of course you would know how that feels, wouldn’t you. Slowly bleeding to death from your ass?” His nose wrinkles, “Embarrassing. How long do you think he’s got? Ten, twenty minu—“

It’s like an explosion. The smell of burning blood and ozone. Zechariah’s eyes widen in rage and he turns to stare where Castiel has dragged himself.

Wings against the storage cages and ceiling, a roar of indignation and the hint of something larger than the human body compressed and forced out through a too small hole.

Dean feels it. It PULLS at his grace and he goes down to his knees with a breathless cry, struggles for a moment in the resultant stillness to draw breath, drags it in like razorblades in his throat and coughs it out again, hand on his chest.

“Dean—DEAN!” Castiel’s propped up against the overturned cabinet he’d drawn the sigil on, sweating and gripping his bleeding side. He motions; “He won’t be gone long. Help Sam.”

He has to shake himself and he bites his tongue because it takes away precious seconds. His world narrows, hones itself to one thing. One person, three letters.

** SAM! **

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	31. The Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Paul for setting me straight on some of the things I was doing wrong. Thanks to Jessi for the pre-read!  
> *hugs you both*

0-0-0

There is blood, too much blood. Sam’s face is waxen, his eyes wide and dilated in shock, breath too quick, too shallow. He meets Dean’s eyes and says his name again, a shuddering, whimper of a breath and it goes through Dean’s chest like a knife. Nothing smooth or subtle but a hard jolting shock of pressure and force an ugly brutal tear and Dean’s body slides into autopilot.

He has to stop the bleeding.

He pulls open Sam’s shirt but there is no wound, just a growing bruise low on his abdomen from the internal trauma. His torso seems strangely twisted. It’s barely perceptible but Dean’s brain latches on, screams WRONGWRONGWRONG in his mind like an air raid siren.

Castiel’s grace comes out of nowhere, envelops his shoulders and head and arms.

Dean struggles with the invisible force long enough for his own grace to flare in response and then he relaxes, the idea—the urge CLICKS and Dean flattens his shaking sweaty palms across the width of Sam’s abdomen, breath catching uncertainly in his throat and he feels Castiel’s grace twist—ideassensationimages flashing in his head.

He sees funnels, gets the impression of blood cells rushing through veins, pupils dilating—He feels like he’s watching a bad montage like at the beginning of zombie flicks and pushebn s back against Castiel’s insistence, threads the grace into his fingertips and squeezes his eyes closed—relaxes and thinks loudly in his head STOP BLEEDING— Demands with everything he is STOP. BLEEDING.

Sam’s hands are sweaty, they wrap around his wrists and squeeze, spasm with every beat of his heart.

Dean has no idea if it’s working or not, there seems to be no change, but he can feel that connection SNAP into being. Becomes suddenly and perfectly aware of panic and breathlessness and crushing PRESSURE that saps all of Sam’s rational thought.

It’s so LOUD!

He hunches his shoulders up trying to cover his ears, like that would help, and tries to force his own responding emotions down, fights to remain calm. The black and red that is Sam claws at him, pulls and thrashes—

“DEAN!”

Hands, slick with blood and CHARGED, pull him back. Blue eyes wide and blazing with light. “Dean—Get your brother out of here! Zechariah could come back at any second.”

He briefly thinks about what his father had told him about spinal injuries. How dangerous they were, how you shouldn’t move the victim—shouldn’t move them unless you had no other choice. “I can’t—“

Castiel grabs his face, squeezes with his fingertips and forces Dean to meet his eyes. “Yes, you can.”

Sam’s face is too pale, and his eyes are rolling as he fights to stay conscious but he finds the strength to speak, says his brother’s name twice in growing urgency; “Please.”

Dean feels his lips moving, words just a hiss of panic. I’m sorry. Sam, Sammy—I’m sorry.

There is no choice, no alternative.

Dean moves his brother, strains and grunts with effort and for the first time feels regret for how badly he’s been treating his body because he isn’t quite strong enough to get Sam off the floor.

The room starts shaking, a growing whine echoing in the corners of the room. The little hairs on the back of Dean’s neck rise to attention and he bares his teeth, calls out to Castiel and watches as the angel catches Sam’s legs and together they lift him, stagger and barely make it out of the building before light explodes outward from its center and flames so hot they’re almost invisible explode from every window.

They’re crushed together in the front seat of the car, Sputnik cowering in the back yapping excitedly at the window as they speed away.

Sam is still fighting for breath, pawing at Dean’s shirt his voice is nonexistent, just breath shaped like words.

Dean’s mind is going a mile a minute, what is he supposed to do? What is he going to tell the doctors? There will be cops, there will be questions. There will be pressure and angry faces and oh God he’s got Sam’s blood all over him. He can SMELL it!

Dean isn’t sure how long he’s driving, it can’t be any more than a few minutes, but it feels like just a few seconds. Like the streets just hopskipjumped past him and they sat still.

The hospital is lit up in white and blue and Dean whips into the ambulance bay, doesn’t even get the engine shut off, slaps her in park and climbs out, vaults over the hood and up onto the elevated walk, shouts for help and doesn’t know what he’s saying. His mind is on autopilot, calm while most of him is shoved deep and paralyzed in fear.

There are doctors and back boards and neck braces and a nurse pushing Castiel away in a wheelchair while Dean shouts that they were mugged. He didn’t see much, but they were mugged. He presses the urgency of those words toward Castiel and catches blue eyes locked with his own in brief understanding before the ER swinging doors clap shut and Dean’s left surrounded by a throng of nurses trying to push him down into a wheelchair.

He feels their cold clammy hands on him, rubber gloves and insistence.

Don’t—don’t touch me!

He sees claws and hungry mouths and spidery limbs. Sick gleeful smiles as they tear into him.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!”

They step back, hands up, trying to placate him.

There’s a woman with her hair pulled back into a series of tiny braids. She has a stern expression on her face that reminds him vaguely of Missouri Mosley but her voice is deeper, more commanding—demanding. “Sir, you need to calm down. We’re trying to help you. Now if you can’t remain calm I’ll be forced to sedate you, understand?”

He bares his teeth, feels himself shaking and keeps one hand up, defensive, a barrier of sorts between himself and their grabby hands. “I’m fine… I—I need to make a phone call.”

“You can make as many phone calls as you want as soon as we’re sure you’re alright.”

He distantly hears a dog yapping and turns his head to see Sputnik trapped between the twin set of sliding doors separating the ER from the ambulance bay, she’s scratching furiously at the door but a security guard is standing there with his fingers on a key shoved in the lock keeping the doors closed.

Dean motions to her, can feel his heart beating in his face and he lets his eyes slide closed so his lids keep them firmly in his head. “She’s mine… I—“ He moves slowly, reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet, thumbs out the card Sam had put behind the ID he was using this month and holds it up to the closest nurse. “—I just need to sit down.”

The nurse takes the card gingerly and a moment later half of the women surrounding him step back and flit away, the nurse with braids, whose nametag reads ‘Coral’, lowers her voice and motions for the security guard to let the dog in.

0-0-0

Bobby is just finishing his second cup of coffee when his cell starts ringing. It takes him a second of patting his pockets to find it but he recognized the number; “Dean?”

There is noise on the other end of the line, hectic shallow breathing through clogged nostrils; “That—that son of a bitch—“ Dean chokes and Bobby is instantly on alert, speaks loudly to drown out the sound of retching.

“Dean? What—what happened? Just calm down a second and tell me what happened.”

He snuffs loudly, spits a few times and clears his throat but it does nothing to strengthen the rough hiss of his voice; “It was a trap… They—Jesus, Bobby—“ He snarls; “I’m gonna kill him. Fucker—I-I’m gonna kill him!”

“Who? What HAPPENED? Where’s Sam?”

“S-Sam’s in surgery… That—He snapped Sam’s back like a fucking twig, Bobby! A-and I HEARD IT! I couldn’t—I can’t— I HEARD IT!”

Bobby sets his jaw, pushes down the rush of adrenaline and rage in his veins. He makes it to the stairs in less than five steps. “Dean, son, just keep breathin’ OK? Where are you?”

Dean tells him between dry heaves.

“Okay, stay with me. I’m gonna get you some help.”

Ellen and Jo are in what used to be the master bedroom, Jo’s just a rumpled blonde head poking out from under the blankets, mouth open and her cheek masked into her palm. Ellen’s got her hair pulled back into a short braid and a Breathe-Rite strip over her nose. It’s strange seeing her without makeup, she’s got little freckles on her cheeks, tiny red capillaries visible like a permanent blush, little imperfections Bobby finds weirdly fascinating, even more so when he sees the butt of a knife sticking from under her pillow. He holds the phone to his ear with his shoulder and nudges the end of the mattress with his knee, speaks firmly but calmly so he doesn’t wake her into defensive action.

“Ellen.”

She hums and her eyebrows arch up, eyes flutter and she comes awake reaching back toward her daughter.

Jo snorts in her sleep at the contact and lets out a snoring wheeze but doesn’t wake.

“Ellen, we’ve got a problem.”

She turns and finds Jo’s sleep relaxed face and sits up rubbing her own; “What’s up?”

“Michael’s Sword is FUBAR, we gotta go.”

Ellen goes from half-awake to terribly, terribly alert in less than half a second. “What happened? Are they OK?”

He grinds his teeth and presses his palm to the mouthpiece; “Sam’s in critical condition and Dean sounds like he’s ready to snap. I gotta go—“

“Not without me you’re not!” Ellen turns and shakes her daughter awake; “Joanna Beth, get up right now, we’ve got trouble.”

Jo pushes herself up, shoving hanks of her hair away from her eyes. Her face is still sleep puffy and she’s stumbling around in a sweatshirt and striped lounge pants. Gathers up the clothes she had on yesterday and heads toward the bathroom.

Ellen seems to have no compunctions against stripping out of her sweats and yanking her jeans back on without even shooing Bobby out of the room. He does, however, have the decency to leave anyway and stand in the hall while he tries to regain Dean’s attention on the phone.

“Where’s the angel, Dean? Where’s Castiel?”

“The doctors took him… I don’t know.”

“Dammit—is he alive?”

“He—he was—Zechariah shot him with God bullets.”

“God bullets?”

“I couldn’t look—I-I felt it but I couldn’t look—Jesus, Bobby I couldn’t look at him. That bastard broke Sam’s back and I couldn’t look at him—It’s my fault! I couldn’t stop him.”

“Whose Zechariah? That asshole ‘at kidnapped you?”

“All I had to do was say ‘yes’ and he woulda stopped, but I can’t—I don’t want him touching me. He’s got no right—NO RIGHT. ‘s my body and they can’t have it! They can’t have it—”

Ellen pushes past him, fully dressed and carrying her bag. Bobby follows her mechanically, phone still to his ear, detours into the kitchen and snags one of the land lines off the wall, punches in a number and grinds his teeth, counts the rings.

“Who is this?” The voice on the other end is deep, accusatory, weirdly alert for this time of morning.

Bobby grinds his teeth, knows better than to make introductions before he’s made his demands, “I’ve got three hunters wounded in Syracuse New York with demons on their six.”

The line is quiet save the hushed murmur of a TV. Sounds like reruns of _Welcome Back Cotter._ “Bobby? Is that you?”

“Rufus, I need them outta there yesterday, can you do it or not?”

Rufus huffs out a breath, heaves himself out of his recliner and clicks off his TV. “Syracuse? That’s a four hour drive—”

“Rufus!”

“Is it the Winchesters?”

“Yes.”

“Figures,” He clicks off the TV; “How bad a wound are we talkin’?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, am I goin’ up there to collect bodies or patch up someone’s boo-boo?”

“I don’t KNOW, just—“

Dean said something, but Bobby couldn’t quite make it out and by the time he had his cell pressed more firmly to his ear again he’d stopped talking.

Ellen snatched the cell from him and went into the hall speaking firmly to get Dean’s attention.

Rufus slammed something around, “Is the kid stuck in the locker or is he hiding?”

Bobby rubbed his eyes tiredly; “I’m on my way but it’ll take me at least twenty-four hours and I need someone there NOW, can you do it or not?”

He snorts; “Yeah-yeah, I’ll do it. Where am I going?”

0-0-0

It took him two hours and ten minutes to reach Syracuse, not that he would ever tell Bobby that it hadn’t taken the full four hours. There was a structure fire on Rover Hill. Three different hose trucks were on the scene and they had streets closed in a three block radius. It burned so bright the sky was illuminated like midday from beneath.

The EMF meter Rufus kept in his glove box whined as he drove past. He was lucky really, that he recognized Dean’s big black car as he circled through the parking lot of the nearest hospital. It was parked slightly askew at the middle of the lot behind some decorative bushes. Rufus parked beside it and peered in at the blood smeared on the front seat.

He gave Bobby a call, relayed that he’d found the car and was going in. Flirted at the nurse behind the desk and asked if she knew where his Godson was. Gave her the name Bobby had given him and shuffled with a sense of quiet urgency down the halls she suggested.

It was an exact science, wandering around a hospital and acting like you belonged there. Hospital staff members were one of the most perceptive groups on the planet. You had to have the right amount of fear, urgency and exhaustion written on your face, just the right amount of speed in your step. Walking too fast people took note of you, too slow people thought you were sick or hurt and took note of you.

Rufus, in his time, had been one hell of an actor and he KNEW how to pull off ‘Concerned Family Member’ very well when it suited him.

What he found when he slipped into Four-O-Three, though, was not at all what he’d been expecting.

He looked like a normal man. Pale and scruffy in the face with a hollow sort of darkness under his too blue eyes. Rufus stared at him for a minute and wondered if he’d perhaps, stepped into the wrong room.

The man was hooked up to IVs and lying with his side propped up on some pillows. He had one hand fluttering in front of his face with a dazed look in his eyes, and the other was outstretched, fingers splayed, palm down like he had his hand on the head of a large invisible dog.

Rufus narrowed his eyes and muttered a quick exorcism under his breath but there is no reaction.

Castiel, for his part, though clueless as he may be as to the intricacies of human social interactions, had his story down pat. He had been mugged and shot, simple as that. Didn’t see the guy’s face but he took my wallet and ran. Easy as pie, earlier when the police took his statement they had assumed he was in ‘Shock’ but seemed to believe what he’d said. Castiel didn’t understand why lying was preferable to the truth but Dean had been adamant about it and the panic in the human’s voice had been enough to set something in his core on edge. There was a bit of fuss as the nurses cut him out of his clothes and jabbed needles into his veins, injected this and that to help with the pain. They seemed to think his objections to being handled so without merit and completely ignored much that he had to say. They administered ‘local anesthetic’ and ‘antibiotics’, rushed in with ‘something for the pain’ but Castiel had just enough grace left in him to burn the medication away too quickly and he laid there and marveled at the wonder than was human physical pain while his wound was cleaned and stitched shut. He was given fluids and cups of ‘Jello’ and more pain medications, something called ‘Morphine’, dressed in a loose smock and covered in warm blankets then left in a small dark room with a man who had been in a car accident and was staying for ‘observation’.

It was strange… Very strange.

The ‘Morphine’, made his head hum and his vessel lax, made his stolen human vision twinkle with colors and a listlessness settle in his limbs. Castiel, forced so close and deep into his vessel felt the effects of it as an unnatural lassitude. A muting of his senses while at the same time an expansion of his perceptions. His vessel seemed almost capable of understanding the scope of time, of thinking and existing in different states.

He waved a hand in front of his face again and watched the shimmering trails his borrowed fingers left in their wake. Glowing skirts of energy and motion curling and twisting through the molecules of the air—

A man appeared at the door, one Castiel had never seen before but knew with a touch of his grace. He flopped his head toward the man and squinted at the refraction of light from the hallway against the walls. Felt the exorcism spoken with intent and his vessel’s mouth curled up into a grin without his permission.

The man in the doorway shuffled forward cautiously; “Castiel?”

The man’s voice rumbled and shook, his eyes seemed to blaze from within and Castiel was sore afraid, tilted his wings in surprise and fear and displayed his palms—felt the arms of his vessel stretch out wide and his head flop forward in submission.

Rufus cocked up an eyebrow and pulled the curtain, stepped up to the bed and leaned forward to peer into those glassy too blue eyes; “You must be the angel.”

“What are you?” His voice was thin, grating—slurred.

Rufus snorted; “I’m a friend of Bobby’s.”

“Bobby—Bobby Singer—“ He flicked his tongue over his lips and his arms flopped around while he thought. It seemed to take visible effort; “I bled on his coat… Will he be angry with me?”

Rufus pulled over a chair and sat; “He’ll get over it.”

0-0-0

You have too much time to think when you’re not the one in the hospital bed. When your time consist of sitting and waiting and watching with worry eating at your insides like some kind of ravenous intestinal parasite.

Dean feels like maybe, out of the three of them, Castiel got off easiest.

They won’t let him in to see Cas. He’s not family, so he has to wait until tomorrow visiting time. They won’t let him back to see Sam because he’s in emergency surgery. Won’t tell him what’s going on because it’s ‘a delicate procedure, I’m sure they’ll send someone out to talk to you shortly.’

Coral finished the paperwork and pushed Dean back into the main waiting room, left him in one of the hard plastic chairs with a cup of water and Sputnik settled between his feet. He’s shaking. Can’t keep a good grip on the cup and has to use both hands to get it to and from his mouth without spilling.

A few other people come and go. A mother and her snuffling kids. A young woman and her friend with a bloody nose and bruises on her throat, both of them smelling distinctly of sweat and booze and pepper-spray. There’s a man with a broken arm and a frat boy who, from the way he’s fidgeting and sweaty—likely has something stuck in his ass.

A couple new nurses come on duty and eventually it’s quiet and empty in the waiting room again. The sun’s too bright. Morning too early… Dean slips away to the bathroom and scratches the back of his throat bloody as he calls Bobby. Sputnik whines and paws at him but he pushes her away, can’t stand her so close.

A doctor came out about half an hour later and pulled a chair close, sat and hunched over his knees to be on Dean’s level. His nametag said Jericho Fletcher, Neurologist. He had a stack of papers under one arm that he fingered while he spoke.

Sam would likely be in surgery for a few hours more. Jericho showed him X-rays and printouts from scans. Spoke in long words with a quiet tone. He’d obviously aced his Bed-Side-Manner quarter because his tone and cadence were meant to be calming and reassuring, but Dean felt bitter, angry. Demanded to see his brother and was denied.

“When he comes out of surgery, the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours are crucial. He will be kept mildly sedated in our Critical Care ward and his condition monitored constantly… You have to stop and think what’s best for him right now. We’re trying to give him the best chance we can of regaining function and sensation in his lower extremities. Burst fractures like this are dangerous. We’re doing everything in our power to ensure he is comfortable and the fracture is stable. Once we’ve determined the rage of sensation and motion he’s been left with we’ll move him to a private room out of the CCU and you can visit him. As it is now, Sam needs to remain as motionless and calm as humanly possible or his health and life could be endangered.”

Dean only heard ‘We have to keep you away from him for his own good.’ And nothing other than that registered. His body felt numb and his head roared of his failure, his guilt at doing this to Sam. Dean feels exposed. He can’t concentrate, his brain is going at a hundred miles a minute. There is panic, a constant loop of that NOISE in his head. The wet solid crack of breaking bone. The shocked gasp of surprise as Sam had hit the ground and realized he couldn’t feel anything.

Zechariah’s words repeat over and over and over and over. _“Why don’t you explain to your brother why he’s going to be spending the rest of his pathetic life paralyzed from the chest down?”_

Dean blacks out a little bit, wakes up halfway through a scan of some sort. He panics at first, images of closed damp spaces, dank rotting wood and crushing tons of earth. He can’t breathe, is TRAPPED, pushes out with the grace looking for Castiel and latches on to the energy he finds and PULLS, pleads for help. Then there’s a voice; “Mister Paige, you need to remain calm… Chloe’s coming in now, so try to relax. Then there’s a nurse gripping his ankle and telling him it’s alright that they’re just checking a few things, given his medical history. He asks what she’s talking about that Sam is hurt, she should be worrying about Sam.

Chloe hums and speaks up into the tube Dean’s found himself in; “Doctor Fletcher thinks you suffered a seizure in the waiting room, this is just a precaution,” She pats his leg again, tells him to take a few deep breaths and hold still. “It can be a little disorientating waking up in the middle of one, but we’re almost done. Just try to relax.”

Once he’s dressed Dean is surprised to see Rufus waiting outside with Sputnik sitting by his heel, he’s pushed out in a wheelchair and the woman—Chloe—stops when Dean looks up and speaks. Dean has no idea where Rufus came from or why he’s there. He wrinkles his nose at the older man and asks in a snarl of a voice; “What the hell?”

Rufus jerks his chin up; “Your uncle Bobby sent me to check on you. He’s on his way out.”

Dean shrinks down in his seat, can’t look at him, feels useless and vulnerable and betrayed. Tells Rufus to go wait for word on Sam and doesn’t look back as the other man nods and leaves. Fletcher comes into the chilly little ER cubicle about half an hour later and brings three more doctors with him, all younger with wide expectant eyes. Dean kind of wants to stab them out with tongue depressors.

Dean answers their questions through gritted teeth, stares them down, fights for some kind of dominance. Jericho says something about his brain activity and showcases color printouts for Dean’s, and the others’ inspection. They seem awed by what, to Dean, looks like the Doppler map during tornado season squished into a roughly brain like shape. He doesn’t care, tells the doctors as much and demands, if there isn’t anything wrong with him, to be discharged.

They keep him waiting for over two hours without so much as a nurse to check in on him. Then they demand blood tests and a flighty looking Latina with glasses comes in pulling a cart behind her, wants to do some kind of Cognitive-whatsit test. She scribbles notes and Dean grudgingly puts little pegs in little holes and tries not to make too many innuendos about the inkblots. He asks what’s up with the psych-consult but she doesn’t answer him, mumbles something else about his brain activity and gathers up her little toys as she leaves.

The neurologist comes back shortly after, looks at Dean like he’s the fucking Golden Child or something and starts explaining again what tests he wants to do.

Dean, in his defense, has had a long day, so he discharges himself ‘Against Medical Advisement’ on the grounds that he’s tired of these douchebags and there isn’t a fucking thing wrong with him. So, when the nurse takes her sweet time paging the doctor to sign the paperwork Dean can’t be held responsible for grinding his teeth and blowing every light bulb in her little office.

They still don’t let him see Sam so Dean sits in silence with Rufus in Castiel’s hospital room drinking weak, watery decaf that tastes like it’s been filtered through a jockstrap.

Castiel was quiet, too quiet. He spoke when spoken to, asked Dean if the wards Rufus had drawn with a wax stick were still viable on the walls of the room, to which Dean gave a numb nod, he could still feel the pull of them inside. Like the banishment sigil Cas had activated in the storage locker pulled at him. He felt uncomfortable, PRESSED upon. He didn’t stay long, wound up sitting in the waiting room hunched over his knees scratching Sputnik behind the ears so vigorously she’d rolled her little eyes up and gone pleasantly lax in his hands.

A doctor comes out and says that Sam is still sedated, they’ve begun the ice treatment Dean had mentioned working so well with his head injury and the swelling has gone down significantly. They still won’t let him see his brother though, Dean wants to put his fist through the doctor’s face, but lances his fingers together and SQUEEZES instead. Nods and shuffles down the hallway, finds himself standing in the doorway to Castiel’s room. The car accident guy is gone and they haven’t moved anybody into the room with him yet. Rufus looks to be taking advantage of it and has usurped the second chair in the room.

Castiel is up and shuffling around, Sputnik goes to him immediately, wiggles and prances in counterclockwise circles in his path. Castiel looks down at her with a sigh and says ‘Hello’ in a tired voice as he shuffles past her pulling the IV pole along at his side, using the steel handhold as a sort of crutch as he goes.

Dean catches a glimpse of pale skin and only realizes Castiel’s naked under that damned smock after he’s got a good look—remembered diffused light playing over skin, every inch of what was hiding under that thin fabric. No. No, it wasn’t real, it was a dream. It wasn’t real!

Dean clears his throat and looks at the ceiling; “Feelin’ a little draft there, Cas?”

The angel scowls at him, a rumpled hair exhausted kind of scowl but he doesn’t bother trying to tug the gown closed in the back. Just continues on his way, unoccupied hand on his injured side.

Dean clears his throat, can’t remember what to do with his hands so he goes to the plastic bag sitting on the floor to Rufus’ left. “Why don’t you put some of your clothes back on?”

Castiel closes the bathroom door behind him with a snap.

Rufus jerks his chin toward the hallway door; “Nurse Ratched and her crew cut them off. Only thing in there’s his coat, socks and shoes.”

Dean rubs his face tiredly and punches himself lightly in the thigh a few times. Great. He turns and taps two knuckles on the bathroom door. “Cas? I’m gonna—I’m gonna go get you some clothes.”

All he gets for his trouble is an acknowledging grunt.

 

 0-0-0

 

Dean almost forgets where he’d parked the Impala. It takes ten minutes before he finds her, snuggled up to the decorative flower bed at the side of the building. There is blood caked on the front seat and prints in the floor. He stands there for a long while just staring, feeling sick to his stomach.

Remembers Sam’s head and shoulders in his lap, one arm around his brother while he sped through traffic, laid on the horn as he blasted through red lights with little care as to who was going the other way.

Sam’s eyes rolled up to the whites, his breath shallow and too quick—skin ashen and sticky with sweat, chilled under his fingertips.

_It’s OK, Sam. It’s OK, just stay with me—Sammy, it’ll be OK—_

But it’s not.

It’s not OK.

_It’s your fault—_ Not now. Not. Now. He swallows with some effort and opens the back door, rummages in his bag and finds a pair of sweatpants that aren’t too stained and threadbare to serve their purpose. Grabs a t-shirt as well, because seeing Castiel in that ugly hospital gown was damned near unbearable and if Dean has no control over anything else he’s not letting Castiel walk around in a fucking backless gown.

Castiel is still in the bathroom when Dean comes back in. Sputnik is on Rufus’ lap on her back letting the older man scratch her belly while she sinks into contented oblivion.

Dean pecks on the door again. “Cas? You—uh—everything OK?”

He doesn’t get an answer.

Another knock. “Cas?”

No reply.

Jesus. He glances at Rufus, “Did he fall down?”

“I didn’t hear anything… Maybe he fell asleep?”

Dean wrinkled his nose.

“What? It happens! Kid didn’t sleep at all last night.”

Dean rolls his eyes, bites out a curse and tries the knob; “Cas, man—you OK?”

He’s just standing there beside the toilet with a scrunched expression on his borrowed face. “I’m seeking epiphany.”

Dean glanced at the toilet with an expression of mild disgust. “What?”

“Bobby said that some of one’s best ideas are made apparent in the bathroom.”

Dean wrinkled his nose, “Yeah… Well, have fun with that. Here,” He held out the bundle of clothes, and only then realized what he was doing. Giving Castiel his clothes to wear. He pulls them back to his chest and makes a hollow noise in his throat; “Uh.”

Castiel lifts his head and blinks.

Dean clears his throat, tries not to imagine all the pale smooth skin under that smock and thrusts the clothes toward the angel again before he can change his mind; “Just get dressed,” No sooner has Castiel taken the clothing than Dean has fled the room, shutting the door behind him with more force than was necessary. His face feels hot and his ears are ringing, skin feeling waxy and unpleasant.

Rufus is giving him a purposeful look, almost knowing. Dean feels like it’s written on his face. The memories on display like dandruff on his shoulders. He shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket and turns away, shuffles up to the bed and picks compulsively at the sheets. “Doc say anything about releasing him?”

Rufus nodded slowly; “They’re doing up the paperwork now.”

Dean nodded, snuffed and rubbed his nose on his fist; “He’ll—uh—he’ll need a hotel room—“

Rufus tilted his chin up; “Already taken care of.”

Dean nodded, felt an unnerving energy building in his chest, a frantic need to MOVE, to DO SOMETHING. His throat felt tight—too tight. “Well—I-I’m gonna go check on Sam.”

Rufus called his name but Dean didn’t turn.

0-0-0

The doctors refuse.

Dean doesn’t relent. He’s a Winchester and that means stubborn.

It takes the better part of an hour of wheedling and pressing IN to intimidate the doctors and nurses, but when they finally allow him upstairs Sam’s not exactly conscious.

Dean thought seeing his brother would be a relief. He’s wrong. He’s very—VERY wrong.

Sam’s eyes remain closed for the most part, although they crack open a few times and blink stupidly up at the ceiling, or his hands clench into fists in the sheet. He has been heavily medicated, doesn’t even look like he recognizes where he is or even cares. He’s pale, there are wires and tubes everywhere; IVs in each arm, collection bags attached to the sides of the bed, heart monitors, an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, something with a red light in it clipped to a finger. He’s in a neck brace and there are pillows stacked all around him, under his knees and shoulders and arms. A little machine like an air compressor whirrs at the foot of the bed, Dean doesn’t know what it’s for, what much of anything that’s hooked up to his brother is for so he stands in the doorway and stares at him for a long time, can’t find anything to say, it’s like the words have just shut up in his throat and refused to move. He feels verbally constipated and there’s an itch in his skin to stick his fingers back behind his tongue, scratch and pull the words free.

He wants to make this right, fights and snarls and curses at himself because he can’t think of anything to fix it, but the urge is there, inescapable and insatiable. Why then, can’t he move?

A nurse pushes past him with a quiet little ‘excuse me’ and announces herself as she comes into the room. “Mister Johnson? It’s Mindy again, I’m just gonna help you turn onto your side and get a look at that incision, alright?”

Sam’s eyes seem to dull and the color of him flares and shrinks back to almost nothing. Dean thought Sam was sedated, but now he realizes he isn’t, not as much as they think he is anyway. Sam’s just gone away into his head like he had when he was a kid. Slid back into his imagination and denied reality.

Dean knows the feeling well, wishes that doing it made things better, if it had he would have done it himself months ago.

Mindy speaks softly, calmly, tells Sam what she’s doing. She pads his stomach with pillows and uses the sheet to get him onto his side.

Sam’s eyes flare when he sees Dean his mouth compresses but he says nothing. Dean feels the weight of his gaze like an iron ball dragging him down into the deep.

Mindy checks all the tubes and wires and folds back the flaps of his gown hums and says everything looks OK, that Doctor Miles will be in shortly to talk to him again. She asks if he’s OK, in any pain and Sam mutters ‘no’ in a transparent voice.

Dean swallows a lump of unspoken sentences and steps further into the room as Mindy leaves, smiling at him politely as she passes.

Sam wets his lips and exhales carefully, it fogs up the mask but the constant flow of air fades it quickly. He acts like it’s difficult to breathe, maybe it is, Dean doesn’t know. Is afraid to ask in all actuality, he’s afraid to get any closer because he’s never seen Sam look so broken, so small and fragile.

_It’s my fault. I can’t keep doing this. I destroy everything… I ruin everything. Look what you did? Look what you did to your brother, Dean! He could have died because of you! He’s going to spend the rest of his life like this because you’re weak. Because you couldn’t do your fucking job and keep him safe. LOOK WHAT YOU DID!_

“Dean?”

He flinches, can’t meet his brother’s gaze.

“Dean—“

He inhales deeply, forces it out and moves stiffly to the side of the bed, stares down at the corner of Sam’s eye, Sam can’t move his head and the moisture leaking out of his eyes just slides over the bridge of his nose and soaks into the sheet. Dean twists his fingers into the fabric of his shirt, can’t choke up any words, doesn’t know why, just can’t make it happen. The air in his lungs is choking him, BURNS in his throat and leaves him voiceless.

Sam looks up at him and chokes in another deep breath, holds it and lets it out; “Where’s Cas?”

_Cas… Cas—warm hands and cool smiles, blue eyes and strong hands— Castiel, warmth, no smiles, too many hands—burningbrightnessPLEASE—_

_Castiel steps forward, sword held in his fist—loose but ready. “I won’t let you hurt Dean.”_

“He’s down stairs.”

“Is he OK?”

“They gave him morphine and he spouted off something about wishing he could still see people’s souls so they watched him pretty close all night, but he’s being released.”

“Can he fix this?”

Dean doesn’t know, swallows roughly and looks at the floor, scratches the plastic bracelet still on his wrist and tries to breathe through the tight burning in the back of his throat. “I don’t—”

“Can he _fix_ this?”

Dean can’t look at him, chooses a place at Sam’s hairline instead, a little bead of sweat clinging near his widow’s peak. “Are you—” _okay?._ He clenches his teeth, feels himself shaking; _Stupid question, stupidstupidSTUPID_. “I’ll fix it, Sam… I promise. Whatever I have to do, I’ll do it—”

Sam bares his teeth, snarls weakly; “Stop it.”

Dean can’t meet his gaze. Clamps his teeth together and tightens his hands into fists.

“You can’t fix this,” Sam’s eyes are furious, face scrunched up in rage and his hands are fisted in the sheets because Dean’s not close enough for them to be tangled in his shirt; “Go get Castiel. Now.”

Dean turns and goes without another word.

Rufus stops him in the hallway as he’s heading back to Castiel’s room and says Bobby had called, that he was thirty minutes out, offers the leash with a cocked eyebrow and a quick; “Not my dog.”

Sputnik looks up at him expectantly and Dean takes a shuddering breath as he heads back toward the elevator.

There’s a grassy patch across the street, a sort of smoker’s borderland from all the soggy butts snuffed out on the pavement and left lying around the freshly planted flower beds. Sputnik sniffs and licks at them then hacks out a wet sounding ball of phlegm and does her business on a few tulips.

There’s too much time to think as he’s parading her back and forth along the strip of grass waiting for Bobby. Too much time to dwell on Sam’s words, or lack thereof in retrospect. Sam hadn’t wanted him, he’d wanted Cas because Cas could fix him, but Cas can’t. He can’t even heal himself really.

What kind of life is Sam going to have, confined to a wheelchair or a bed, most of the world inaccessible and unsympathetic. What happens now? They can’t run away from this. There will be no quick escape out a side entrance and a few days nursing bruises and gauze covered in blood then a quick escape down another stretch of highway filled with more monsters. This—Dean takes a deep breath and leans his hips against a soggy picnic table toward the end of the lot under a maple with small leaves sprouted on it—is not something they can get away from.

A few birds in the branches bounce around singing, probably threatening to shit on his head if he gets too close. Dean thinks that may just be his luck and laughs a little at the absurdity of it. The whole cosmos has been shitting on him since he was four years old. Why should this be any different?

Dean rubs his face and takes a moment to stare at his hands, how they shake and his veins are standing out like they’re ready to burst. It sort of all sinks in at that moment, Sputnik sitting between his feet looking up at him as if just waiting to be told what to do. She’s shining at the edges, reaching out to him earnestly, blamelessly. She has no idea what kind of weight is hanging over Dean’s head. No idea that Dean is the reason his brother is lying in a hospital bed unable to feel or move anything below his chest. That it’s Dean’s fault Sam may never walk again, may never be able to forgive him—

She paws at his ankle and tilts her head to the side, something Dean thinks she’s picked up from Castiel and that, is really the straw that broke the preverbal camel’s back.

_I don’t deserve this… I’m not worth it—It’s my fault. I break everything I touch._

He grinds his teeth and clears his throat, pinches his nose and rubs his knuckles into his eyes but it’s no use. It just bubbles up in his chest and overflows and he can’t stop it—feels angrier that he can’t manage to choke it down than he had to begin with—but it’s just too much. He crouches down— defensive, learned over time and pain, make yourself smaller, tighter and the blows just bounce off. All his muscles are tense and a full breath just won’t come. He feels suffocated, constricted—pinned. Feels like there is nothing but this yawning rent in his chest filled with black ooze—demon blood—sour and rotted and eating away at his tender red insides. There’s no end of it, an ocean boiling inside him.

The dog yaps at him and puts her paws on his knees, her cold nose to his jaw and sniffs wetly across his face, tries to sneak her tongue out to lick at him, but she’s slowly learning that he doesn’t like it, seems to fight to restrain herself.

He finds the sides of her head with his hands, tangles his fingers in her fur and for a long while just sits there and watches his numb digits pass through her ruff, pusher ears flat and watch as they spring upright again. She looks at him. Looks him right in the eye and there is no blame there, no condemnation, no pity or anger.

It’s a strange thing, fleeting—but Dean finds himself reaching out to her and there is a brief connection, a ZAP like static electricity between his fingers and a doorknob. There are no words, but the way his heart beats faster is familiar, the urge he feels from her is known.

_Sadness, needtoprotectdon’tbesadloveLOVELOVELOVE._

Love without the urge for reciprocation. Selfless, innocent—Pure.

He chokes out a sob and presses her little face between his hands, bunches all the remaining baby fat up around her grinning dog mouth and sparkling eyes. She doesn’t seem to mind, pants up at him with her tail wagging hesitantly behind her.

“You don’t care, do you… You really don’t care about all the shit I’ve done… the things I’ve caused,” He rubs his nose on his wrist and digs his fingers into her coat, scratches his nails gently against her head and neck.

She licks her lips and shifts on her feet eagerly, fighting the urge to lick him.

He breathes in and out and just says it.

“I don’t want Sam to hurt… But I can’t say ‘yes’ to that bastard… I can’t do it,” His chest feels tight, sobs fighting for freedom, “I don’t want anyone using me like that again. I won’t let them,” He tries to smile but can’t, bows his head against hers and compulsively scratches at her back, needs to do something with his hands that doesn’t involve digging bloody furrows in his own skin. “I hope you never know what that was like… I hope nobody EVER knows what that was like,” He coughs, can’t stop his throat from tightening or the constant flow of moisture running over his face. “It’s my job to protect him and I couldn’t—I-I was selfish and I can’t make myself feel bad about it—I don’t—I’m not a good person. How could I just let that asshole hurt him like that and not do anything to stop him? How—I’m not worth this—“

She grunts and for a second Dean thinks maybe she can understand him, maybe this is her protesting. He doesn’t know why, but it stops the words dead in his throat and for a while he just fights to breathe. “I have to fix this. It’s my responsibility… I have to find a way to fix this without saying ‘Yes’… I-I’ll let Cas charge up again and he can…” His voice catches in his throat and he knows, even as he says it that the possibility of holding back his grace long enough for Castiel to recharge himself completely is slim-to-nil. “I’ll figure it out… I’ll fix it. I’ll make it right.”

He wanders back inside, scrapes his boots dry on the rug inside the door, blinks in surprise when Sputnik pulls back on her lead, kicks and digs her paws at the mat as well, puts her tiny nose in the air and walks at his heel with her tongue lolling. He rubs his face dry on his sleeves as they climb into the elevator and mumbles ‘show-off’ in her direction.

Castiel is dressed when Dean stops outside his room. He’s sitting ramrod straight on the edge of the bed with one hand over his wound, eyes on the TV. There’s a news broadcast playing, something about extreme weather in the lower South-East. Video of three watery towers off the coast of Florida ‘Water Spouts Threaten Beach Goers’ Young people in bikinis with cameras taking pictures and pointing and taking their time drinking their beer while fleeing the storms.

A nurse has been by while Dean was outside and left a tray of tasteless food for Castiel to pick through. It looks like all he’s touched is the coffee and a few spoonfuls of jello. Rufus has taken over the fruit cup and is absently chewing pieces of pear while watching the storm.

There is a stack of papers on the side table, Castiel’s release forms, and a few blue slips of paper, prescriptions for pain medication and antibiotics most likely.

Dean walks up to him and takes a wide stance, like he’s bracing himself to be hit, tilts his chin up and snuffs back residual wetness in his sinuses; “Okay, do it.”

Castiel blinks at him and Rufus glances over, spoon halfway raised to his lips.

Dean motions to himself; “Touch it.”

Rufus’ eyebrows meet his hairline.

“Come on, Cas. I don’t got all day. Let’s get this show on the road… Touch it!”

“Should I leave you two boys alone for a while?” Rufus has that look on his face again, knowing, amused.

Dean feels color rising to his cheeks and shifts uncomfortably on his feet.

Castiel inhales deeply, narrows his eyes—and looks to the floor. “I can’t.”

Dean feels like he’s been slapped. “What? You can’t?”

Castiel looks up at him and it’s the closest to actual anger Dean’s ever seen on his face; “You’re too unstable.”

Dean balks, gestures violently to Rufus; “What about him? Touch him!”

“Oh, hell no!” Rufus pushes himself up and backs out of the room; “I had enough threesomes in the seventies. You two are on your own.”

Dean feels his heart beating harder and harder. Feels his vision shrinking in at the edges; “You have to fix it, Cas. You’ve gotta do it—just TOUCH it already and go heal Sam!”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t!”

He pushes to his feet, seems to tower over Dean, some cosmic immensity of wrath and ruin even as the body he’s contained in is two inches shorter than Dean and smells like sweat and antiseptic. “Zechariah is much more powerful than I am at my full strength. He used his grace to injure Sam. Even if I was fully charged I would be unable to undo what he’s done. It’s only by virtue of his underestimation that I’m still alive… I CAN NOT heal Sam, Dean.”

He feels the bottom drop out of his stomach and the tiny scrap of hope he’d managed to stitch together down stairs crumbled between his fingers.

“But I know who can.”

Dean stared at him, on the border of disbelieving; “Who?”

Castiel’s tongue slashes over his lips and there is an earnestness in his eyes that sparks something familiar in Dean’s chest;

“God.”

Dean seems to have forgotten how to swallow and it takes a few tries to manage it; “Sorry—did you just say ‘God’?”

“I’m going to find God.”

Dean compresses his lips. “Cas—“

“Not only can he heal Sam, but he could stop this. He could stop Lucifer and Michael. He could stop all of it.”

There is pity in Dean’s eyes when he looks up again. It’s a graying of the normally vivid green of his gaze. A washing out of his soul like a fading of color from a once vibrant piece of cloth repeatedly washed.

“Cas, if there even is a god, he stopped caring about us a long time ago. What makes you think he’ll give a damn enough to put down the cocoanut full of booze he’s sipping on some cosmic beach and help us? If he’s really there why the hell did he let this happen in the first place?”

Castiel’s gaze darkens; “There is a god, Dean. And I will find him.”

Dean shakes his head, rubs at the raw swollen feeling around his eyes; “Cas, man, you can’t even mojo yourself into putting on pants the right way, how the hell do you think you’re gonna find God?”

“There are objects, ancient objects forged from sacred materials that resonate with God’s Grace.”

“What, like God Detectors?”

“These objects are very rare and they burn hot in the presence of God.”

Dean bobbed his head forward; “Okay, and where exactly do you expect to find one of these things?”

It’s small, a little twitch of the corner of his mouth and Dean—for half a moment—doesn’t see Castiel the angel standing there before him in a threadbare OZZY t-shirt and backward sweats, he sees his Cas, all mussed hair and small crooked grins. Flashing denim blue eyes and mischievous intent. His heart swells in his chest and steals his breath because this is REAL. This is right in front of him and that void of memories in his head surges up—so close but still unattainable.

Castiel looks down with keen interest and for a moment Dean fears his body has betrayed his thoughts and desires. He shifts his hips uncomfortably and is relieved when his genitals seem to have been paying no attention to the conversation.

It’s then that he realizes Castiel isn’t looking at his crotch, not by a long shot. He’s staring at the hunk of bronze hanging from a string around Dean’s neck, nestled over his heart. A horned, grinning god of intuition judging by the spiraling ‘third eye’ on its brow.

Dean takes half a step back and is tempted to cover it with his hand, feels more violated than if perhaps, Castiel had been looking at his crotch.

“May I borrow it, Dean?”

“No!”

He looks up, confused, as if he’s never been denied before.

Dean wraps his hand around it possessively.

Castiel seems to deflate a little; “If you insist on keeping it in your possession I would suggest carrying it pressed to your hard palate. The nerves in the mouth are more sensitive to temperature change. Even a subtle difference could be crucial.”

His nose wrinkles up in disgust; “I’m not putting it in my mouth.”

“Then I would have to carry it. Human skin is not sensitive enough to pick up the variations in heat. You wouldn’t be able to pinpoint a starting direction.”

“No.”

“You’re being unreasonable. I would return it—“

“NO!” It had little to do with the thought of the amulet being lost and more to do with Dean being unwilling to share something that had grounded him the past months. Something that had given him comfort when it felt like he was coming apart at the seams. He wasn’t attached to many non-living physical things, his car his gun and the amulet were the only three that were irreplaceable at the moment. They were HIS and he was not going to allow a piece of himself to be USED like this again.

Castiel stared at him, like maybe he’d just heard the snarling thoughts that slashed through Dean’s head. The association of these three specific things as part of himself. Things he could ultimately control in a way he had not been able to control much of his life. Castiel looked at him as if he found that concept fascinating… and piteous.

Dean, in that moment, wanted to hurt him. Wanted to make him shut up and stop judging him even though Castiel hadn’t said a word. His hands shook and curled into fists and his jaw tightened—teeth popping—

Castiel’s head inclined half a degree and his voice was soft, smooth; “I am doing this to ensure you will not be made into a tool for Zechariah’s purposes… I do not wish you to come to harm.”

He shook, felt like he’d taken another plunge in icy water.

Castiel stepped closer and reached out. Cupped one palm to the side of Dean’s head, over his ear—it wasn’t a particularly intimate gesture. Dean had touched people like this Before. Casually, without thought or intent—

But there was something different about it, something MORE and Dean felt his shivers still. Felt his heartbeat slow and his breath ease back into stressed lungs.

Castiel’s eyes moved, flicked to his lips and up again with a perplexed expression curling his features. _Confusionuncertaintycuriosity—longing._

Dean swallowed a soft tension in his throat and tightened his jaw, unsure exactly what was happening.

But then the moment passed and Castiel blinked repeatedly, withdrew and turned away. He didn’t speak for a long time.

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	32. Chapter 32

32; Sharing is Caring

0-0-0

Bobby came into the room first. Rapped his knuckles against the door and spoke in a firm, raised voice. Like maybe he expected Sam to be more out of it than he was.

They still had him on an ice blanket and Sam felt sluggish and chilled, like a snake in early spring. The cold had penetrated so deep into his bones it bordered on agony, every screw the surgeons had used to affix that steel rod in his back ACHED in a way not even a broken wrist had. Like the worst toothache he’d ever experienced multiplied by ten and punched into his spine. The pain medication didn’t even touch it, just made him not care it was there. He blinked toward the door, unable to move his head because of the brace, unable to move his body because of the fortification of pillows and the severity of his injury. 

Bobby was standing there looking nervous but trying like hell to hide it. Ellen and Jo were behind him, the latter with her lip between her teeth, the former with a cup of coffee. 

They all had the same expression on their faces; worry and sadness and pity.

Fuck pity!

Sam’s fingers tightened in the sheet and he looked away, focused on the pattern of dots in the acoustic tile above his head. Started counting them again to distract himself from the chill and the ache in his back, the absence of any sensation from his lower chest downward. 

They appeared in his periphery once more, Bobby closer to his feet, Ellen next to his head, Jo somewhere near Bobby’s elbow with her arms crossed and her face schooled into calm. Sam thought that just made it worse.

Ellen sat her coffee down on the side table and rested her hands on the bed railing; “How’re you holding up?”

He ground his teeth, tried to keep them from chattering; “Fine.”

She snorted almost like she was amused but her eyes were pained, watching his face for anything, any little slip that could give her a clue as to what he was thinking; “Talk to me, Sam. What do you need?”

He didn’t know. He honestly didn’t know. His mind was a whir of activity, yes, but most of it was panic and confusion and anxiety. Remembering people he’d seen over the years in wheelchairs, imagining himself as one of them, folded up into an aluminum frame while his muscles atrophied, shrunken and toneless. Having to move his legs back and forth because they won’t move on their own, no sensation or maybe if he was lucky limited sensation. All the tubes and collection bags he’s got stuck in him now—living the rest of his life with plastic and medical adhesive and surgical tape. 

That SOUND of crushing bone like an animal getting hit by a car and the sudden flash of whitehot agony, EVERYTHING had hurt—

“You can find a way to fix this,” The words come out half choked, he’s still trying to familiarize himself with the difficulty of drawing a full breath without the aid of lower chest muscles. No diaphragm, no functioning abdominal muscles. It’s difficult to hold his breath or even cough, the air keeps trying to leak out under the weight of his own flesh. They’ve had him on a CPAP machine every night because sometimes he just—just stops breathing. 

Ellen looks like she wants to touch him, to shush and say ‘don’t push yourself’ but he has to. That’s his new reality, the PUSH. She breathes deep and flexes her fingers; “We’re looking. We’ll find a way to fix it and if we can’t then we’ll deal with it. You’re alive, that’s all that matters,” After a moment she lets out a sigh; “The things you boys get into…” She loses her battle and pushes her fingers through his hair. “Jesus, you’re cold. These folks ever heard of a blanket?”

He sucks in a deep breath and lets it out slowly; “Ice therapy, to control the swelling.”

She nods but it isn’t in agreement, “Is it working?”

“I have no idea,” He finds himself trying to turn into her palm as it makes another pass but all he can do is close his eyes and welcome the touch when it comes; “They’re not telling me much.” 

“Well that’s a load of crap,” Bobby leaned forward on the heels of his hands, fingers flexing against the foot of the bed. “What’s the doctor’s name?”

Sam tells him and Bobby pulls himself up to his full height, looks imposing in a way Sam isn’t used to and leaves the room with his jaw set. 

Jo shifts around the bed quietly, peering at each tube and receptacle. Sam feels himself go red in the face, humiliated that the secrets of his body are so readily available for casual perusal. Part of him wants to tell Jo to knock it off that he feels exposed and vulnerable enough as it is without her figuring out where those tubes are going and why, but he bites it back, chokes it down and turns his eyes to the ceiling again, tries to separate himself from everything just like before. 

Ellen’s hands continue combing through his hair, work down his arms, kneading the muscles because she needs something to do, needs to feel like her presence is accomplishing something. 

Bitter words build up behind Sam’s teeth, snappish comments that will drive her away. He doesn’t understand why she’s doing this, what the point of all the contact is. He doesn’t really want to be touched, doesn’t want her pity—Sam wonders suddenly if Dean felt like this, helpless and broken into jagged little bits. Jesus no wonder he was so depressed.

Ellen turns to her daughter and says; “See if you can find Dean and Castiel then get some rest, alright?”

Jo looks at her mother long and hard, glances at Sam then gives a nod, retreats.   
Sam watches her go for as long as he can then finds a spot on the ceiling to focus on and swallows a lump forming in the back of his throat. 

“You don’t have to put on any kind of show for me, Sam,” Ellen pulls over a chair and sits, fits her hands through the holes in the railing and curls her fingers around his. “Nobody’s gonna judge you.”

He doesn’t know what she’s talking about at first, what show? He’s just laying here trying not to freak out that he’s—That he’s hurt and it might be the forever kind of hurt not the kind you stitch up and forget about. It scares him the idea that this might not be fixable. That no manner of spell or supernatural interference will change a damned thing and he’ll be stuck like this until he dies. He feels it building in his sinuses, back in the aching recesses of his head, can’t stop the flood no matter how fiercely he fights it. 

There’s nothing relieving about it, weeping in front of someone, he struggles to control it but can’t and that just makes him more angry. Makes him feel even more helpless and likely to collapse in on himself, like a parade balloon without air. Ellen picks at the plastic bracelet on his wrist and memorizes his ‘name’. Hums a little and waits for him to re-center himself. It takes longer than either of them care to admit; “Anything I can do to help right now? You thirsty? Hungry?”

He wants to shake his head, doesn’t feel like talking, but can’t because of the brace, huffs out a breath and finds his voice too thin and brittle; “No.”

She hums again and decides it’s time to meet the elephant in the room, “So, what kind of prognosis you got?”

He wets his lips and wonders if she’s just doing this for the distraction it will offer him from the cold, she could just have easily asked one of the nurses or waited until Bobby came back with the doctor. “I can’t feel anything from here down,” He hovers one hand over his stomach; “It’s weird… Like everything just stops there… I don’t even really notice it until one of the nurses comes in to turn me over or my hand… It doesn’t feel real,” He lets out a strained sounding noise; “Is it stupid that the first thought I had when I woke up was that I’m never gonna have an erection again?”

Ellen snorted and gave her head a little shake, her eyes are wet.

He swallows tries to smile but his chin is trembling, “Don’t tell Dean.”

“About what?” She wipes at something wet near his hairline with the pad of her thumb.

“That the first thing I thought of… I—I used to tease him about being horny all the time but— I must sound like such a sleaze.”

She squeezes his hand; “People do this every day, Sam. They can do it, so can you.”

“How the hell am I supposed to hunt like this? Dean needs help—“

“Dean can take care of himself.”

“No, he can’t—That—that bastard,” He tilts his eyes toward Ellen and forces his voice to lower; “They want Dean. They want him to be a vessel—Zechariah would have killed me to make him say ‘Yes’. He can’t do this alone.”

Ellen sits up a little straighter; “Dean’s a vessel?”

Sam looked at her; “He has to give his consent before Michael can do it but he wouldn’t say ‘yes’ so, Zechariah did this to me and he hurt Castiel… He can’t hurt Dean directly but this is worse. Dean he—He’s got all this shit going on in his head—He’s hurting himself. He thinks I don’t know but I’ve seen it. He makes himself throw up then won’t eat—“

Ellen touches his head again, tries to shush him, calm him down; “I know. I know, he and I—We talked a little bit.”

“He needs Help but he’s so stubborn—He’s only hurting himself by keeping it in but I can’t make him see it and now this!”

“He wants help too, Sam. He asked for it and all we can do is wait until he’s ready to accept it.”

“What if he doesn’t? Zechariah won’t stop. As soon as he finds us again he’ll pick up where he left off. They’ll use me against him… They’ll use US against him and sooner or later he’s going to crack and I can’t let that happen,” He shivers and something in his eyes hardens, grows cold. “I can’t let that happen.”

Ellen’s brows draw down and she squeezes his hand a little too hard, “Sam, what are you saying?”

Sam inhales deeply and tries to hold it long enough to slow his heart; “They won’t stop trying to use us against one another… I can’t hurt my brother like that, not after—“ He closes his eyes tightly, but tears still find a way through, “You weren’t there, you didn’t hear—“ He squeezed the hand in his with as much force as he could muster; “Things happened to him Down There. Things I can’t begin to understand and this bastard—Zechariah, is going to hurt him exactly the same way. He’s found our weak spots and he’s going to keep hitting them until Dean breaks and I can’t let that happen… So I’m gonna take away part of his leverage… He can’t use me to hurt Dean if I’m not there—“

“You better not be thinkin’ of—“

“If I kill myself he’ll say ‘yes’ just to bring me back… But if—if I push him away—“  
Ellen’s eyes widen.

“The demons used him against me and I let Lucifer out of the cage… Zechariah used me to hurt him and if it hadn’t been for Cas—I can’t. I refuse to play this-this apocalyptic chess game. I won’t be a pawn against my brother. If pushing him away means that’s a smaller chance of him saying ‘yes’ then I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure he’s OK. Even if that means leaving.”

Ellen’s face darkens and she squeezes his hand so tightly Sam can feel the bones rubbing together. “Now you listen to me,” Her voice is low and dangerous and something about it sends a strange thrill skipping around in Sam’s chest. He’s seen movies and TV shows where ‘mothers’ use The Voice, but it’s never been directed at him before. He shrinks back and stares up at her with his mouth hanging open.

“Dean has been through Hell, Sam. Literal HELL. He isn’t gonna see you stepping back to save him, he’s gonna see his BROTHER LEAVING HIM! He— Whatever happened to him, he needs as much support as he can get and you’re the closest person he has! You’re the only blood family he has left and you cannot ‘PUSH HIM AWAY’ because you think it’ll keep him safe! You don’t just let him think you hate him! Jesus Christ! You do that and it’ll kill him, Sam! Or worse yet he’ll kill himself!”

Sam’s teeth click together he closes his mouth so quickly. “What?”

Ellen’s jaw tightens and she grinds her teeth before she can speak again; “He’s hurting himself, Sam. You’ve seen it and so have I, but that isn’t all he’s doing. He’s thinking, I don’t believe he thinks of much else when he isn’t distracted by hunting or working on cars. It’s eating him alive inside and YOU want to leave him alone with that!”

“They can’t use me against him if—“

“And if you’re not there you can’t watch his back—”

Sam forces himself to breathe deeper, slower; “How the hell am I supposed to watch his back? People will remember. They’ll—I could get him killed if someone notices us! I’m a liability like this!”

“And if that ain’t the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard; ” She motions to the tubes and the length of his body. “We’ll find a way around this. Worse comes to worst? Dean retrofits a wheelchair to ward off demons and maybe he has to drive that Prius instead of his car. Big deal… He’ll bitch and complain but he’d do it in a hot second because you’re his brother. Paralyzed or not he isn’t gonna give up on you so easy. He’ll fight God himself to keep you around. You know he will.”

Sam’s jaw clenches and for a moment he can’t breathe, it’s the first time he’s let himself hear the word ‘wheelchair’ and see himself in one. Rolling along behind Dean like nothing’s wrong. It hurts deep in his chest, thinking of himself restricted unable to run to Dean’s side when he’s needed or take stairs two and three at a time. —“I’ll just slow him down.”

“And you not being there won’t? Do you really think, as reckless as Dean has been since he came back, that he would take care of himself without you there to help? How long do you think he’d last before just scratching his arms bloody wasn’t enough and he turned to a knife, or drugs? Wouldn’t be the first time a Winchester’s thought filling himself with alcohol was a good coping mechanism. How dangerous do you think a cocktail of anticonvulsants and Hunter’s Helper is? What if none of that is enough and he eats a bullet?” 

He can’t speak, feels the words burning in his throat like stomach acid. He turns his eyes away and tries to convince himself that he’s done right by Dean, that pushing him away is the correct course of action. That Dean wouldn’t kill himself… That SAM wouldn’t kill himself, but he can’t. He feels sour—bitter and strangely selfish. He—he feels ashamed for even thinking it because he already has. He’d thought—The only way I’m gonna keep him safe is if I’m not there and the first thing he’d pictured wasn’t pushing Dean away. 

Ellen retakes her seat and pats his wrist; “Sam, Dean needs you… And you need him. You’ll need as much help as you can get in the coming months even without the apocalypse hanging over your heads,” She reaches up and rubs away a streak of moisture slanting across his temple; “You need help and there ain’t a damned thing wrong with askin’ for it,” She breathes in and huffs it out; “Jo and me? We’ll do whatever we can and I figure you’d have to chain Bobby up and lock him in the trunk to keep him out of this.”

“And what if you get hurt too? What—what if you get killed because of this?”  
Ellen bobbed her shoulder toward her ear; “Gotta die sometime, might as well go out doing something noble.”

He wanted to snort, wanted to make a noise to highlight how stupid he found the idea of a ‘noble death’ but couldn’t. 

Ellen traced the edges of the bandage on the back of his hand; “Some folks die for King or Country, some die doing stupid shit… If I’ve gotta go messy, you better believe I’m gonna go protecting what I love. This world may be on its way down the shitter, but if you find someone—or something that makes you happy, it’s not half bad… And that’s worth fighting for. Even if it hurts and breaks you apart, it’s worth it.”

Sam stares at her, remembers not too long ago saying almost the same thing to Dean when he’d been fresh from the Djinn’s poison and cracked in his seams. He swallowed with a measure of difficulty and nodded, wetted his lips and nodded again. “Okay.”

0-0-0

Dean wanted to argue when Jo came to collect him. He wanted to snarl and slam things around and press OUT threateningly. Wanted to tell Jo that he wasn’t leaving Sam, not now, not ever—

But then he remembered the look in Sam’s eyes. The frigidity. The barely controlled rage. 

Sam didn’t want to see him. Sam didn’t want him there because he knew. He KNEW it was Dean’s fault he was hurt and he could SEE the guilt written like a curse across Dean’s face. Could read the weakness in him as plainly as the words in any book. 

Castiel insisted on going up to see Sam. Limped in with the bag of his prescriptions in one hand and the other on his side, scrutinized Sam and exhaled deeply, seemed to sag in defeat. “I can’t do anything more than what’s been done… If I were to attempt it—“ He lets the sentence just hang there unfinished. 

Sam seems to understand because he lets his eyes fall closed; “Don’t worry about it… We’ll figure it out.”

Castiel glances over his shoulder at Dean where he’s leaned against the wall at the foot of Sam’s bed.

Bobby looks him over, notices how peaked the kid’s turned. His eyes are kind of swollen, like he hasn’t slept, but his face is ashy looking, a good two or three day’s worth of scruff on his cheeks. Shoulders hunched and the collar of his jacket standing upward, like a shield around the back of his neck. Dean’s always had a Thing about his clothes making him feel protected, always had some sort of complex about what constitutes Safety. Bobby supposes it has something to do with the ‘Nurturing’ environment Sam and Dean had been raised in. Without fail, no matter the season, thirty below zero or a hundred and thirty, Dean will have on more than one shirt and he’ll have the back of his neck covered. He’ll have his vulnerable spots protected. Since returning from Hell Dean’s become almost neurotic about it. How he hunches his shoulders and stands with his back against walls, eyes perpetually shifting, the nervous tic in his fingers, flinching like he’s reaching for a weapon, scratching like he’s digging for gold in his veins. 

Bobby sees him now standing there and even as he speaks to his brother, he can’t look at Sam. Dean stands there stiff and self-conscious and Bobby’s never seen emotion written so plainly across his face before. 

Dean’s hands are curled in his pockets, cutting crescents into his palms with blunt nails. He’s forcing himself to look down or at the wall or the bags of fluids hanging near Sam’s head but every so often Sam will make a little noise, will stutter in a breath or make a little grunt of effort as he speaks and Dean’s eyes will snap up, will focus on his brother and he’ll clench his teeth, fighting himself to keep from moving, to keep from digging his nails into his wrists so hard he tears the veins free like dandelion roots. Its like watching him get stabbed in the chest over and over and over. There is such naked pain and want and GUILT in Dean’s eyes Bobby feels ANGRY and wants to just—just SHAKE him but at the same time is afraid that if he touches Dean the kid will politely shred like tissue paper. 

“I have a plan,” Castiel says, keeps his voice pitched low and there is a vibrating sense of urgency rolling off of him. Bobby attributes it to that FULL feeling in the room from Castiel’s very presence. That what he’s feeling is the unflinching proof that Castiel is unlike anything he’s ever seen before. He imagines big white wings and flowing robes. Remembers the pictures on the flyleaves of his mother’s big bible the one he keeps wrapped in one of her old dresses at the bottom of a steamer trunk in the attic. Angels and some waify looking Caucasian Jesus with weepy blue eyes and dewy lips. He’d always felt vaguely uncomfortable looking at them. 

“What kind of plan?” 

“I can’t undo what Zechariah’s done, but I know someone who can,” He looks to Dean and draws his shoulders back, it’s subtle but Bobby catches it; looks between the two as Castiel speaks and tries not to notice how Dean watches the angel. “God left Heaven eons ago, but He didn’t abandon us. He’s here on Earth and I intend to find Him.”

“God?” Bobby can’t help but roll his lip up at the thought of it. “You’re gonna find God?”

Castiel explains about certain relics resonating with God’s grace. And that Dean happens to have one. Bobby snorts when Dean motions to it.

“That thing? You think it’s gonna find God?” He rocks back in his seat a little like he’s been slapped. “It’s supposed to give you psychic dreams—“

Castiel lets out a little huff, like he doesn’t quite get why he’s being questioned. “What its shape was intended to be is irrelevant. The metal it was crafted from was taken from something much larger. Something Sacred. It Resonates with and will burn hot in the presence of God.”

Bobby looked both incredulous and awed, scratched at his ear and muttered something about feeling kind of shitty now for talking the guy who sold it to him down from fifty bucks to twenty.

Castiel turns back to Sam with an unblinking almost impatient look on his face. “He can fix this. All of it.” 

“You really think God’ll help?”

There isn’t even a hint of uncertainty in his voice. “Yes.”

0-0-0

Ellen and Bobby step into the hall to speak with Jo after Castiel and Dean go to fetch the Impala. 

Ellen draws her daughter back into a hug and lowers her voice; “Keep an eye on Dean.”

Jo blinks, brows pulling down and draws back to stare at her mother uncertainly. She can tell by the look in her eyes that something is amiss and a quick glance to Bobby confirms her suspicions; “You think he’d try something?”

“I think Dean’s in a very bad place right now. He’s scared shitless and he’ll look for an outlet.” 

“Should I keep Rufus handy?”

Bobby nods; “And I’d tell Castiel.” 

“Do you think he can help in his condition?”

Ellen purses her lips and speaks carefully; “I think Dean will listen to him, even if he’s not thinking straight.”

Bobby catches Sam looking their way, brows down and something curious in his hardened gaze. Sam doesn’t like how they’re whispering. Excluding him from what is obviously an important conversation, Bobby doesn’t blame him, he doesn’t like talking about Dean like this but its necessity; an ugly, unfair, brutal necessity. 

Try as Dean might, he can’t keep it hidden anymore, he needs help because it’s written in the lines of his body and the fear in his eyes that he can’t deal with it alone anymore, but is so far down in his little gopher hole he can’t tell which way is up. 

Bobby Singer has learned the hard way that Winchesters are fundamentally stubborn creatures. Even lying there with his back broken and patched together with steel rods Sam looks at Bobby defiantly. And Dean? Dean’s barely holding himself together but he won’t ask for the kind of help he needs. Pride is part of it, fear is another, but when it comes down to it Dean and Sam just don’t know how to stop. 

Bobby breathes in and out and turns to Jo; “If it gets outta hand just call.” 

Jo nods, accepts another brief hug from her mother, steps back into the room long enough to squeeze Sam’s shoulder and whispers that she will be back later that evening. To get some rest and try not to worry too much. It’s an impossible request considering, but there’s nothing else to do. He can either relax and try to heal or… or do what he’s always done. 

Bobby thinks it was kind of a waste of breath, Sam is a pharaoh of denial. He’ll attempt to cope, convince himself this is temporary or at least try to. Put on a strong face and soldier on like nothing’s wrong, then it’ll all blow up in his face. It’s inevitable. He’s a ticking bomb. 

Ellen fusses around the bed for a few minutes, combs her fingers through Sam’s hair to get it out of his face. Asks him if the nurses said anything about him being able to shave or have a bath that she’ll give him a hand. 

Sam’s face goes horridly red and Bobby clears his throat to remind them of his presence. 

Ellen gives him a crooked look and pretends she hadn’t heard anything.

Two nurses come in, the taller one with the pregnant belly introduces herself as Sandra, the shorter nurse is Quinn and together they maneuver Sam from his back to his left side, rearrange the pillows and blankets, fiddle with this machine and that. Blood pressure and blahblahblah. Bobby tries to ignore what they’re doing, his stomach is unsettled by the alienness of seeing someone else move Sam’s legs for him. It kind of solidifies the situation in his mind and he excuses himself, goes for coffee and takes a quick detour outside to make a few phone calls.

Sam may be a pharaoh of denial, but Bobby’s had his turn on the throne. There has to be a way to fix this. Some spell or tonic or SOMETHING. Hell, he’d even put his money on experimental medical treatment at this point. Anything really, he just needs options because as good natured as Castiel’s being with his wholehearted belief that God will fix everything, Bobby’s a realist and he can’t put all his faith in something that abandoned HEAVEN. He’s seen too much shit in his life to believe that God can do much of anything at this point. And who the hell knows how long it’s going to take for Castiel to find the guy to begin with. If it’s even possible. 

He’d rather be safe than sorry. 

Sam isn’t in a good mood when Bobby returns upstairs. Ellen’s pulled a chair up so they can talk and whatever they’d been discussing goes hush when Bobby slips back into the room. 

There isn’t much to do in hospitals. You can wait, you can sit and wait, you can pace and worry yourself sick. You can badger the nurses and doctors until they call security. But all of it amounts to one thing. WAITING. 

He settles himself in his chair in the corner and drums his fingers against the arm rests for a few minutes, until Ellen gives him the stink eye. 

Then Sam says it. Just flat out, no warning SAYS IT.

“You can’t let Dean say ‘yes’… Not even to fix this.”

Bobby’s chin slips off his fist; “Say ‘yes’ to what?”

Sam breathes for a moment, steadies himself and pushes his voice out a little louder; “Dean is Michael’s vessel.” 

Bobby chokes; “Michael? As in The Archangel Michael? Set to slay Lucifer, Holiest of Angels, Wrath of God; MICHAEL?”

Sam just looks at him and Bobby sags back in his seat with his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide. He twitches, twice, like he’s preparing to say something but the words get lost between his breath and lips. Kind of just hanging there on his uvula like kids on a tire swing. To Sam he looks kind of purple in indignation then he leans forward, hands lifted and spread out as he speaks;

“The Archangel Michael wants to use DEAN as a vessel?”

“What part is confusing you.”

“The Why mostly. Your brother ain’t exactly a saint!”

“Zechariah said something about it being his destiny… I-I don’t know. But you can’t let him say ‘yes’.”

“He’s Dean. Nobody LETS him do anything. He damn well does what pleases him, consequences notwithstanding.”

Sam’s hand twitches on the sheet; “The angels aren’t going to stop until he says yes. They’re going to keep coming after me and Cas and you guys. You didn’t see him, Bobby, he was terrified… I-I’ve never seen him that scared before. Not since Alistair,” Sam’s jaw tightened like he was nodding, even though he couldn’t move his head and his voice came out muffled behind the oxygen mask; “I’m not going to let these bastards hurt my brother… I’m not going to let them use me to do it.”

“Boy you—“ Bobby’s mouth opens to say something but the look on Ellen’s face is what stops him.

“Just listen to what he has to say.”

Sam breathes in slowly; “I need to talk to a psychic… Someone strong—“

Bobby wrinkles his nose up, but it is without malice; “Well the strongest psychic I know of is Pamela but I’m pretty sure she’ll shoot us in the balls if we get near her again.”

Sam’s jaw twitches; “Anyone else. Anyone.”

Bobby exhales; “Only one I can think of that would even think of helping out is Missouri Mosley. And last I heard she packed up and headed south,” He taps his hand on the arm rest again; “I’ll make some calls… Can I ask why you need to talk to a psychic?”

“Honestly? The less you know the better.”

He pushes himself up, snorts and shakes his head but goes to make the calls.

0-0-0 

It’s another hotel on another highway outside another city in another forgotten corner of the country. 

The florescent bulb over the sink is slightly green and buzzes loudly like a bug zapper. 

Dean can see the gas in the bulb moving around like the current in deep water. It reminds him of the weekend he’d spent in Kentucky the summer he and Dad split up. Business, as it were, was slow and pitching that leaky old tent he kept shoved in the back of the trunk in the national forest for five bucks a night was a hell of a lot cheaper than the fifty a night for a room at the lodge by the truck stop. It had been a hundred and twelve degrees and the grass under his boots had crunched and crumbled like ash, like maybe it would just spontaneously combust and go up like bones drenched in gasoline. Snapcracklepop Rice Crispies and all that bullshit. It had been so fucking hot he’d crept away from his spot one evening and hoofed it through a football field’s length of Loral bushes to get to the river—completely ignored the seething ripples on the surface and jumped in—only to nearly drown himself when the undertow caught him. Looking back on it he was one lucky son of a bitch that Dad had made it a point to teach them to swim at a young age. Sometimes those algae greenish, piss warm motel swimming pools just became too tempting to kids in the summer. 

He felt maybe like he was drowning now, staring at the gas flowing in the light bulb. Hypnotized, not in control of his faculties. 

Jo came out of the bathroom with a bleary eyed, half-awake look in her eyes and politely kicked Dean in the shin. “Get off my bed, Winchester.”

He rocked with the blow, blinked and looked up at her as if he didn’t know where he was. “Huh?”

Her eyebrows lifted; “Get outta my bed.”

He turned and looked over his shoulder at the other bed, Castiel was already sprawled there with his injured side propped on a pillow, snoring softly. Little guy had dropped off shortly after they’d arrived, swallowed the pill Jo gave him and—out like a fucking light. Dean turned and looked at Jo again like she was crazy.

She shoved his shoulder; “Come on! MOVE! You’re not sleeping with me.”

“Now hold on a second—“

“You and Sam used to share a bed all the time when we were kids.” 

“I was nine.”

“Now you’re acting nine. Move.”

“Can’t you get your own room?”

She snorted; “And who exactly is gonna pay for it?”

He turned to look at Cas again, felt goose flesh rise up on his arms and the back of his neck. An icy shiver up and down his spine. 

“Dean?”

His hands shook. 

“Hey,” Jo touched him. Innocent really. Just a hand lightly grazing his arm, but he still flinched. “You OK?”

“Fine.”

“Really?”

He breathed in and pushed himself up, raked a hand through his hair and scratched viciously at the back of his neck. 

“Look, Dean… I—“ She shrugged one shoulder toward her ear; “I’m sorry, OK? I know what happened. So, if you need to talk or anything.” 

“I don’t need to talk. I don’t want to talk. I’m FINE.”

“You’re also pretty much shaking all over because I suggested you sleep in the same bed as him.” 

His lips compressed and his nails dug in harder.

“You don’t have to be OK. These kinds of things take time—“

“’These kinds of things?’” He snorted; “What does that even mean?”

“It means you’re allowed to be scared. You have nothing to be ashamed of… This—What happened doesn’t change that you’re Dean Winchester, OK? You survived it. It was awful and I can’t imagine what it must have been like—but you survived it. You came back.”

It rattles something in his chest and he looks at her, feels unsettled bubbling in his middle; “But why me, huh? What about the other souls still stuck down there? What about everyone I tore apart because I couldn’t last just a little longer—“

She tilted her head; “Would it be my fault if it had happened to me?”

“No!”

“Would you blame Sam if it had been him instead?”

“Of course not!”

“Then why are you beating yourself up over it."

His throat dries up and there are no words. Because I should have known better? Because I should BE better? Jesus he sounded like an asshole even in his own head.

“It was out of your control, Dean. Anybody, if you push them enough, will snap. I don’t care if they’re the kindest, most non-violent type of person ever… Or the strongest, pig headedest asshole on the planet. Everyone has a breaking point. Even you, OK? You’re not Superman.”

He snorted and crossed his arms a little tighter.

“Demons… demons won’t stop. You try to hurt them and they just get mad. You were—It’s called Hell for a reason,” Her voice cracks and Dean wonders exactly how much she knows, what Sam and Bobby have told her. What Ellen could have told her. What she’d guessed all on her own  
.  
“Jo—“

“What happened to Sam isn’t your fault.”

He turns bodily away, grinds his teeth and tries to push out against her, tries to make her get that the conversation is OVER. 

But Jo Harvelle is stubborn. She was born stubborn and life has made her more so; “We’ll find a way to fix it… And if we can’t.. well, then we can’t.”

“So, what? I’m just supposed to sit back and accept that an Angel broke my brother’s back?”

“No… Right now, you go to sleep and tomorrow morning you and Castiel go find God.”

Dean swallows a lump growing in his throat, squeezing and squeezing like it wants to choke the life from him. A savage little beast bent on killing him and itself in the process. 

“You want to help? That’s what you do.”

He rubs the end of his nose on his fist; “What—what if we can’t? What if we can’t find him? What if we can’t find him because I’m all—“ He makes a clawing motion at his chest, “What if I’m not strong enough to find him?”

“What makes you think you’re not strong enough?”

He looks at her and doesn’t say anything. Just looks and waits and feels naked when she sees. 

“If anyone can find God, it’s you… You survived HELL, Dean. Nobody—NOBODY has ever done that before. So, stop beating yourself up, you don’t deserve that kind of punishment.”

He stands there silently for a few minutes, aware of Jo as she stepped up behind him, but staring at Castiel, the shape of him beneath borrowed clothes. The dark scruff on his face, the bruises in the bends of his arms from IV’s and needles. The way he was sprawled, inelegant and peaceful like a kid, seemingly careless. The curve of his neck and ebony crescents of lashes fanned on his cheeks.

Jo bumped him gently with her elbow and Dean flinched, looked down at her with shame written on his face. “It’s just sleeping… You don’t even have to touch one another.”

He finds it suddenly difficult to swallow. 

“If it really bothers you, you know you can share with me, right?” Her voice is hushed, barely a whisper. “I just thought… you know. With the way you two need to be close to one another so he can heal.”

He choked down a lump in his neck.

She let out a soft sigh and leaned a little closer; “You remember that tornado when I was like, four? We spent the night in the basement and my mom read The Hobbit to us while we waited it out?”

He nodded. 

“You and Sam dug a hole back in the cliff out back? And that whole week the only thing you wanted to do was play in it. You called it your Hobbit Hole and me and Sam were dwarves?”

“And your mom was the dragon…” He found his chest wasn’t so tight anymore, “When we went back after the rain stopped Sam found a snake in there and chased me with it?”

Jo smiled, butted Dean’s shoulder with her head and appraised Castiel with her chin tilted up, “He’s like that garter snake. He’s harmless, just looks scary.”

Dean snorted; “Says you, you haven’t seen the shit he can do… Little guy’s a walkin’ A-Bomb.”

“You can’t see the way he looks at you sometimes… You wouldn’t say that if you did,” She turned away and set about preparing the unoccupied bed for herself. 

Dean stood there for a moment longer, practically fidgeting with nerves before he shook himself and began bunching the blankets up, building a wall to separate himself from Castiel. Anything to put a barrier between them. It wasn’t long after his head touched the pillow that he noticed the crease of tension between Castiel’s brows smoothing. Felt—felt the angel’s grace stretching out—kind of like a glob of jello left out in the sun. Seeming to melt and expand and ooze out. Uncurling—

It brushed against him, more of a sensation he felt through what grace he possessed than through his skin. It—it was warm. Calm—like floating in the ocean or sinking into a bath after a long week. It started as more of a tentative prod than an actual touch, but he reached out curiously, felt Castiel’s energy ripple when it was poked, all fluid and natural in a way that not much was in this world. It reminded him vaguely of Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. That big tentacle of water that stretched in to check out the scientists. 

He felt stupid and small, like a kid poking a finger into a fish tank and feeling the scaly inhabitants brushing against their skin. But Castiel—Castiel felt familiar. More so than he should and Dean found himself melting into the contact as well. Felt some kind of connection formed between them. Castiel’s grace could have completely enveloped and crushed his own without effort, but instead it remained passive, allowed Dean to reach in and poke around. Seemed to glow brighter wherever Dean touched. 

He said he would get stronger the closer to me he got… He wasn’t kidding was he.

He felt as if he were actually helping and it was the first time in a long time that he’d felt that way. It—it was a relief, a distraction. He was doing something constructive. 

Jo snorted, already asleep across the room and Dean turned his eyes back to Castiel, to his vessel’s sleeping face. Such a familiar face—

Breathe in. Breathe out. His heart beats in time. 

Right now, you go to sleep and tomorrow morning you and Castiel go find God. You want to help? That’s what you do.

“Okay,” He pulled in a deep lungful of air and let it out, let his eyes fall closed and didn’t flinch when Castiel’s grace echoed with his decision. “Okay.”

0-0-0

She’s standing on the corner when Dean finds her. Hand on her little hip, blunt tiny nails coated in chipped sparkle nail polish. Her hair is halfway pulled up into a lopsided ponytail on the side of her head and there are smudges on her eyelids, like maybe she’d gotten into her mother’s makeup and tried to ‘make herself presentable’ or cover the bruises that were turning yellow green on her cheekbones. She’s puffing madly on a cigarette and tapping one booted foot in tune to the Walkman hooked in the belt loop of her skirt. 

She’s wearing the same clothes she wore yesterday. There’s a ketchup stain on her shirt. At least Dean hopes its ketchup because he doesn’t know if she knows how to get blood out of fabric. If that’s something Normal People know how to do. 

She turns to look at him and sucks her teeth, pulls a soda bottle out of one of the inner pockets of her oversized jacket. Gives it a spiteful little shake and sneers at Sam where he’s peering from behind Dean’s hip; “You let him pull that toother yet, Samalot?”

Sam pokes his tongue out through the gap in his mouth and she laughs.   
It sounds like sunshine and broken glass and—

And there’s something aboveontopWITHIN him! Brightness blasted apart by moonlight and galaxies like ink dropped into milk—hands tearingbreakingburning screams and blood between his teeth, copper and iron and salt— chocolate and marshmallow and fizzy drinks, blazing summer heat… lights flashing in smoke—

Oh, Father!

Dean lurches upright with a hand clutching his chest and the other grinding down on his crotch in fear, holding the blankets down because—

Jo is sound asleep, sprawled across the other bed and there is a hand on Dean’s shoulder, fingers and thumb slotted perfectly against the scar there—an anchor—a claim.

You’re mine and nobody else will ever have you like I did.

Possessive, fingers biting in all nails and force and restraint—

Dean knocks the hand away and pushes to his feet, walks quickly to the bathroom and shuts the door. Clicks on the light and blinks dazedly at his hands, presses them together and ignores his reflection in the mirror as he washes his face, splashes on more moisture to hide what had already been there. 

There is an aching throb in his chest, breathless, like his lungs had forgotten how to work while he slept. He leans against the door and his knees unbuckle, send him with a soft thump onto his ass in the floor. He pushes his head down between his knees and forces himself to breathe, to teach his lungs how to inflate properly. 

Nobody comes to the door to check on him, but he can FEEL Castiel reaching out to him, curious but somehow respectful of his space. Only getting close enough that Dean knows he’s there before retreating. He feels stronger and the brush of him against Dean’s periphery feels less like smoke.

Smoke… Lights in smoke—

This is important. It’s so important but it’s already fading, falling away—He grinds his teeth, covers his ears with the flats of his hands and reaches after it—feels it slipping through his fingers but refuses to let go.

Lights in smoke and the taste of chocolate and bubbles in his nose.

He draws the memory up and holds it tightly, possessively. Breathes in and out and clings like the wind may tear it away. 

He relaxes slowly once he realizes the memory won’t be stolen, not this time. His stomach feels heavy and he wants it to stop. Wants to feel normal again, weightless inside like he used to.

The dream is gone save impressions of light and heat and flashing eyes. Nothing else remains but what he’s managed to hold on to. But it’s enough, something is different now. 

‘Did you let him pull that toother yet, Samalot?’

Dean remembers a child. Remembers BEING a child. There had been a girl. His first instinct is to think it’s Jo, but Jo is two years younger than Sam, this child had been near to his own age, had looked at him with eyes too old for her face. Smiled with too many teeth and not enough amusement. Bitter and chipped from too many fists to her lips. 

More than that as Dean slowly releases what he’s clinging to he remembers hands—So many hands pinning him down even as he fought against them. Hands that felt so familiar and… and he’d been so close. The memories were SO CLOSE.

He rubbed his face and exhaled loudly, felt his hands shaking and his stomach tight with the urge to be sick; “What the fuck is wrong with me.”

Castiel is sitting on the edge of the bed when he returns. Watches with too blue eyes as Dean gives the bed a wide berth and goes for his bag, looks for something that’ll help him sleep because it’s only nine PM and Jesus Christ he’s got the whole night ahead of him.

Jo stirs to wakefulness behind him as he’s searching. Asks Castiel what’s wrong but Dean speaks first; “Had to piss… Got a headache.” 

Jo grunts and pushes her hands through her hair to straighten out the knots, climbs to her feet and stretches backward like a slinky. She flicks on the light over the sink and disappears into the bathroom, comes out looking more awake, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She takes in the clock and unplugs her phone from its charger, calls and tells Bobby she just woke up and is on her way. 

Dean watches her as she moves around the room, pulls on a jacket and shoves her feet into her shoes. She gives him a Look before she leaves but if she notices the lingering redness of his eyes or the paleness of his mouth she doesn’t say anything. 

Dean turns off the light and takes the bed she’d vacated. Hunches his shoulders under the blanket and pretends not to see the confused, disappointed look on Castiel’s face. 

His skin is still crawling and he scratches at the scar on his shoulder all the harder when the skin there proves to be less sensitive than that around it. It feels unnatural under his fingers. Charged and blinking like a beacon. Like Castiel had just carved ‘MINE’ into his skin. 

He hadn’t necessarily liked it before, but now just the feeling of it makes him feel slimy and used. It’s proof that Castiel has touched him and he isn’t sure he likes what it does to his head. That he has been touched without his knowledge. Against his will. 

He doesn’t notice any time has passed until headlights flash across the curtains and he can see Castiel’s silhouette against them. The angel is still sitting on the edge of the bed, but his head has sagged forward into one palm, the other on his side. He looks weary… run down and on the verge of collapse. 

Dean wets his lips and is opening his mouth to speak when the door opens. He’s more surprised than anything when the person who comes into the room is Ellen instead of Bobby, but he doesn’t know why. 

Women are chatty, right? What if Jo told her? What does this mean that she came instead of Bobby?

Bobby would have been OK. It wouldn’t have been awkward. But he’s TALKED to Ellen. It’s a little difficult to even look at her now, least of all be trapped in a hotel room with her all night and be forced to climb back into the bed with Castiel. 

Even the wall of crumpled blankets Dean had constructed between them hadn’t been enough to allow him true rest, even if he did fall asleep. Sleep just happened. Rest had to be achieved and he didn’t know if he could manage it with Castiel so close. 

Ellen called out quietly to Castiel when she noticed he was awake. Asked if everything was OK. 

Castiel said that he was fine and once Ellen had peeked at his bandaging—fuck why hadn’t Dean done that earlier—she asked about his medication and watched him swallow a few pills before she was satisfied. 

It didn’t take as long as it had earlier to take hold and soon he was out again, hands folded close grasping on air. 

Ellen didn’t say anything at first. She went to the bathroom and took a shower. Came out smelling of vanilla and cherry blossoms and cold cream. Dean thought she looked kind of strange without makeup. Less ELLEN and more like a mom. She settled herself on the bed at his back and for a moment he thought she was climbing into bed with him and felt a flash of discomfort in his gut  
But then her fingers pulled at the blanket, letting in the cool of the air and the buzz of the light over the sink. “Hey, tough guy…”

He didn’t look at her, pretended like he hadn’t heard her speak. Childish but when had he ever claimed not to act childish on occasion. 

She tucked the tag of his t-shirt under and didn’t lift her hand away. “Wanna tell me what happened?”

He swallowed and his throat clicked. “Not much to say really.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t want to be touched right now and that bed’s kinda small, so—“

She lifted her hand away and pulled the blanket back up but didn’t leave. “Another nightmare?”

“Woke up before it got bad.” 

“That’s good… But I wasn’t talking about the sleeping arrangements.”

“No?”

She hummed and combed fingers through her hair, started braiding it for sleep. “The doctors came around this evening… Said how lucky Sam was… That from the amount of blood that had been on his clothes they’d expected the damage to be much worse.”

Dean’s brows drew down but he said nothing. 

“They said that it’s common, for impact victims like Sam, to have massive internal bleeds… But what they found was minor considering,” She paused, tugged at the blanket a little but didn’t touch him; “He used the word ‘miraculous’.”

Dean’s jaws popped.

“Sam said he remembered you putting your hands on his stomach before he blacked out,” She traced a curlicue pattern on the pillowcase by his head. “You wanna tell me something, Dean?”

He snaked his hand out from under the blanket and stared at it. Remembered pressing them against Sam’s abdomen—stop bleedingstopbleedingstopbleeding.

“I just wanted it to stop… He was bleeding to death and I wanted it to stop—“

Ellen made a shushing noise above him, leaned close and whispered in his ear; “You stopped it… You did good.” 

“How can I do this stuff? Cas—Castiel said that the grace should have faded away, but it didn’t. Why—What does this make me?” He snuffed wetly; “Ellen? What if we can’t find God? What—what if I can’t fix this?”

She was quiet for a moment, inhale, exhale—“Then we deal with it. You boys have got the shitty end of the stick, but we’ll work with what we’ve got if that happens. That’s all we can do.”

0-0-0

Rufus appeared early the next morning in his truck with a bag of food in one hand and Sputnik’s lead in the other. “Damn dog yapped all night,” He shoved the lead into Dean’s hand as soon as he was in the room and collapsed into a chair at the little table, tore open the bag and passed around sandwiches and foam boxes of biscuits and gravy. 

Castiel was groggy and stiff. His stomach grumbled and he ate with the enthusiasm of a child studying for a test. Forked biscuits and gravy between his teeth like it was cardboard and blinked slowly at the world around him.

Dean wasn’t much better. Nothing seemed to taste right and he only managed half of his own food before the sight of it became too much and it was either stop or vomit. 

Ellen looked at him questioningly and Rufus asked him what was wrong that there was no way in hell he was full already. 

Ellen didn’t push, turned to Rufus and asked if he’d heard anything back from his contacts. Distracted him from the green of Dean’s preverbal gills.  
Castiel didn’t say much when Rufus pulled out the printed satellite images and weather maps. 

There were demonic omens sprouting like wildfire and the only place they seemed to stay away from was Maryland and a little Podunk town in Alabama with a population of about thirteen hundred. 

It wasn’t really much of a start. When Dean wrapped his hand around the amulet and kind of—felt at its edges with his grace it just felt like a hunk of metal. Weird metal, not copper and not brass, bronze or gold, but metal none the less. 

Dean didn’t believe that this was going to be anything more than a snipe hunt until Castiel reached forward—without warning—and wrapped his hand around Dean’s where it held the pendant. Castiel’s four larger hands wrapped around it as well and—

It was kind of like dog whistles, Dean decided. That period of his childhood when Sam had found one and teased him with it. Laughing and blowing on it every chance he got because Dean could hear it and he got some weird four-year-old kick out of torturing his older brother. It had faded off after a while, one ear infection, two and the dog whistles never bothered him again, but he could still remember it. How the sound had almost been more of a vibration than a noise. A shrill TWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE that made his eardrums vibrate and flutter. How Sam had cackled when Dean would clap his hands to his ears and threaten to beat his ass if he didn’t stop. 

He FELT it more than he felt it. Kind of like there was a thread hooked into his grace and was pulling it. He felt momentarily unhinged from the ground, seasick because he couldn’t equate his physical bearings with what the grace was telling him. His body didn’t know how to translate it so instead it messed with his equilibrium. 

“Oh, jeez—“ He cupped his free hand over his face and swayed forward to rest his forehead on the tabletop. 

Castiel levered himself up; “I suggest we leave quickly.” 

Dean grunted; "I’ll get right on that. Just let me catch my stomach,” He swallowed convulsively and focused on his breathing, willing the sensation away. 

Sputnik yawned tiredly and leaned her head against his leg. He reached down and scratched behind her nearest ear, pried his eyes open and peered down into her tired little face; “Yeah, tell me about it.”

0-0-0  
0-0-0  
0-0-0


	33. Titanium

0-0-0

33; Titanium

0-0-0

Dean has always felt at home on the road. Some of his fondest memories took place in the back seat of this very car, eye spy and card games. Comic books and watching Sam sleep through a cold while Dad drove and explained that vampires aren’t like the ones in the movies.

But Sam isn’t in the car now.

Sam’s in a hospital learning how to cope with paralysis and Dean’s on the road with an angel who hasn’t quite grasped the importance of bathroom breaks until his vessel’s bladder is so full he can’t sit straight.

There are seven states and over three thousand miles between Dean and Sam now. Two weeks and three days.

There are demons killed and an apartment building free of its deceased tenant’s spirit.

There are daily sessions with a respiratory therapist and Monday, Wednesday, Friday appointments with a physical therapist. Then there’s the actual therapist that comes in to talk and listen while Sam talks.

There are nights spent in hotels and hospital rooms where Dean stares across the canyon between the beds and doesn’t see his brother but sees a familiar face that hurts just the same. Reaches out with his grace and feels Castiel’s meet it in the abyss.

Ellen calls nightly and Dean walks or checks the engine while he talks to her. Sometimes he drives to get takeout while Castiel ‘Meditates’ pulls back from his vessel a little and scans the area for interference, angelic or otherwise.

There are pills and little dogs that climb into his lap while he drives to stick her head out the window and beat his chest with her tail.

There are nurses and catheters and colostomy bags, tests and hope that feels sour.

Sam sits in a wheelchair for the first time and feels dread because unless Dean is successful, this is his future until the world ends. Sam feels bitter and pathetic. People live full lives without the use of their legs and yet he is lost to it. Overwhelmed, frightened— it seems impossible. Insurmountable. His arms ACHE and he bares his teeth when the nurses tell him he’s doing well. Bites his tongue when Ellen or Bobby have to help him into and out of the chair because his arms are so tired. Focuses on the ceiling and tries to separate himself from the world around him when a CNA comes around to help him bathe.

_I can’t do this… How—how do people do this?_

But he can’t ask. Not now. He can’t let himself be weak. Not for anything.

Dean calls and sometimes they talk. Sometimes they don’t. There are words unspoken and things both want to hear but do not.

There is blame and there is guilt and in the end they are both silent. Both breathe words not for the other’s benefit but for those listening to them speak.

“You just hang in there a little while longer. We’ve got this. I’ll fix it.”

“Keep yourself safe, don’t do anything stupid. I’ve got this. I’m fine.”

0-0-0

Dean has the first Dream on a Wednesday. He’s had them before, but never in such close proximity to Castiel, never where he risks his thoughts being heard.

It’s the same Not Room with the window that is not a window and a bed that is not a bed.

There is pressure and movement—it’s just how he remembered it, but it’s not His Cas that’s bent over him. The face is the same, the presence and body is the same, but the eyes for a moment appear uncomprehending, curious—then surprise shifting quickly into disbelief. Awe.

Dean wakes on his back with his arms over his head—tried as he had to wake before it happened, there is a cooling mess in his underwear and Castiel is looking at him visibly shaken.

Dean clamps down on the still vivid images, shoves forward hatefully against the grace still connected with his own and rolls out of bed, blanket fisted around his waist.

They don’t talk about it.

Or, Castiel stares at him with his brows scrunched up and his fingers flexing nervously against Sputnik’s fur and Dean glares out the windshield with his teeth clamped together and his energy bristled around him like a fucking porcupine.

The nightmares of Alistair and his many faces are almost nightly, but something—Dean suspects it’s Castiel—chases them away, mutes them and Dean is able to pull himself back and away from them. Is once or twice even able to say ‘no’ and the demon looks at him through his father’s eyes, confused and flabbergasted before he explodes in a gush of maggots and rotting blood and leaves Dean standing on a strange road looking down at a splash of dark liquid, broken glass and crushed cake on the sunbaked pavement, a sense of WRONG pounding away in his chest.

Sometimes, though less frequent, Dean finds himself looking at a world he’s never seen before. Something wild and unbelievably BEAUTIFUL. Like a jungle. The sun breaking over the ocean as it seethes like after a hurricane. Everything around him GLOWS with LIFE and SOUL and Dean thinks that maybe this is Heaven. That somehow he’s managed to patch into Castiel’s memories and is seeing Heaven.

He is always gently redirected from these instances to something different. Usually it’s dreams of food or TV shows or lying on his back in a field staring up at the sky during a meteor shower. Something beautiful but nowhere as otherworldly as the places he’s seen before them. Sometimes a memory of Sam is there, younger and chattering but he can’t hear him. Other times it’s silent and he’ll look over and see Castiel sitting beside him, naked with too many arms and eyes that glow like stars and black shadows behind him of wings. Dean thinks maybe he should be afraid of this vision of Castiel, but he’s not. Those instances seem all the more peaceful for their strangeness and Dean takes comfort in it.

0-0-0

Finding God is not as easy as one would think.

Castiel though, has grown stronger daily and with his returning strength his impatience has multiplied.

“It would be much faster.”

“You’re not zapping us there. Save your strength.”

“I assure you, ‘zapping’ there wouldn’t drain me. It would also take only a millisecond as compared to the six hours it will take on the ground.”

“No.”

Castiel sighs and turns to the window.

Dean tightens his jaw and turns back to the road.

God, apparently, holds no such compunctions against zapping back and forth, sometimes more than once in a minute. Now that he knows what to look for, Dean can’t stop looking. It’s like porn. After he’d seen his first vagina at eleven he couldn’t stop looking. It was an addiction.

Hi, I’m Dean and I’m a Look-a-holic.

He snorted. “This would be so much easier if—“ He clamps his teeth shut.

“What?” Castiel looks smug. His stupid eyes are squinted and his stupid face is smug and stupid. “I don’t believe you finished that sentence.”

Dean sneers at him. Rubs a hand tiredly over his face and refuses to speak. He drives another hour before the God Compass flicks quickly thirty degrees to the north, then BAM— It disappears completely.

Dean stomps on the break and jerks the Impala off onto the side of the highway. A few angry motorists lay on their horns and flash middle fingers as they speed past but Dean doesn’t really give a shit. He leans his forehead against the wheel and breathes slowly.

Castiel breathes in and out and in the back seat Sputnik yawns.

“This isn’t working.”

Dean snorts; “No shit.”

“This car is landlocked. God can go anywhere He so chooses at any time. If we want even a chance of finding him, Dean, we have to do things my way. If you’re so averse to flying let me borrow—“

“NO. We’ve gone over this a hundred times. You’re not taking it!”

And Castiel turns to stare at him, there is something utterly human on his face. Dean’s seen it before, feels it jolt through his core like a knife and remembers sitting in the Impala in the Djinn world looking at His Cas just seconds after he’d slugged him in the arm.

“Why? Give me one reason and I won’t bring it up again.”

“Because I said ‘no’!”

“I could take it and you wouldn’t be able to stop me.”

Dean feels his chest tighten and he bares his teeth, pushes OUT and feels Castiel push BACK, finally gets a good glimpse at how small he is compared to even Castiel’s diminished state and his heart skips a beat.

“You wouldn’t…”

“Wouldn’t I?”

Dean can’t breathe, swallows and tries to push down the sensation of vertigo that overtakes him as whatever the God Compass is pointing at zips back and forth and back and forth.

“No. You wouldn’t.”

Castiel stares at him, seems absolutely MENACING but Dean stares back, feels his heart jumping around erratically in his chest.

Castiel looks away. Is no less imposing, but at least all that celestial frustration isn’t directed at Dean any longer.

He lets out a shuddering breath of relief. “Okay… that’s it,” He smacks the shift and, once the nearest lane is empty he merges back onto the highway and takes the nearest exit. “I hate to say it, but maybe Ellen was right. We’re not gonna do a damn bit of good if we’re burned out and at one another’s throats.”

Castiel glances at him, still a tumbling spinning knot of disapproval.

A Super Eight is all Dean can find after twelve miles. It’s a mid-eighties vintage building with dark wood beams and stucco on the outside. Reminds him of the old Pub in Canonsburg and sets an uncomfortable itch under his skin.

The woman behind the desk has hair down past her butt and a high starched collar. Looks like a transplant from the Amish country and eyes them with her nose wrinkled up when Dean asks for a room for the night while Castiel marches Sputnik around the parking lot under the illusion of walking her while he leaves little warding sigils burned into the mailbox, a lamppost a decorative juniper bush that smells like dog piss and another lamp post on the opposite side of the building.

“I’m sorry, did you say two rooms?” She says.

“No, just one.”

She purses her lips and taps the computer keys a little harder than she should as she signs him in and swipes the credit card of one Thomas Petty to pay for it.

Dean snorts derisively when she tosses the keys onto the counter in front of him and turns away fingering the cuffs of her shirt, skirt swishing around her feet.

There are two small beds in the room. Dean looks at them and feels the muscles in his back tightening up like someone’s plugged a torque wrench into his spine.

Dean’s tempted to go back down and give her a piece of his mind but he’s too tired. He’s just—he’s too tired. Instead they deposit their things and Dean kneads the back of his neck tiredly. “Come on, I’m hungry.”

There’s a chain restaurant about two miles back toward the highway, but Dean’s pretty sure a dinky little town like this has a bar somewhere and sets about finding it, Castiel in the passenger seat with one hand on Sputnik’s back, the other on his knee. Looking like a cardboard cutout.

Dean thinks Castiel looks good in denim and green under one of Sam’s old hoodies, but he’s sitting too stiff, too alert. “Dude, you need to relax.”

Castiel looks at him. “I am relaxed.”

“You look like you’ve got a flagpole up your ass.”

Castiel’s face turns a delicate shade of pink and he shifts his hips against the seat; “That’s not physically possible.”

Dean rolls his eyes skyward; “It’s a figure of speech, Cas. It means you’re carrying yourself all stiff.”

A little more blood comes to the surface.

Dean blinks and glances at Castiel’s lap and quickly away, mouth opening and closing; “Oh.”

After a moment he repeats himself.

“Oh.”

Castiel turns back to the window.

“So… you’re—anatomically correct.”

“This body is entirely human, I assure you.”

“That’s not what I meant. I’ve seen you naked—“ he clears his throat; “I meant YOU, like—like ACTUAL you. You’re not—not JUNKLESS.”

The hand on his knee comes up and he props his chin on it, elbow on the lip of the window.

The motion doesn’t go unnoticed. Dean feels a flutter behind his ribs. Nervousness and something close to excitement.

Castiel isn’t just angry about the car rides and lack of results on the Finding God front… He’s _frustrated._

Dean leans back in his seat a little, props one elbow in his own window; “You know, if you—if you need some alone time I can drop you back at the hotel. It—it’s not a big deal.”

“Why would I need to be alone?”

It’s probably the closest to an actual grin Dean’s gotten in a long time. He rolls his head on his neck and eyes Castiel. “Cas, you can’t kid a kidder.”

But Castiel doesn’t look any closer to saying anything. In truth he just seems genuinely confused.

Dean shakes his head; “Come on, you’re not that dense… I mean, really. You think Jimmy’s never pulled his pork before?”

And Castiel’s eyebrows meet his hairline, his grace gives off a static POP and the streetlight above them fizzles out.

Dean feels it bubbling in his chest and doesn’t immediately know what’s happening until the laugh has already erupted. “Aw, man. Seriously? You—Oh, no… No no. I don’t believe it.” He turns in his seat to look at Castiel with new perspective. “Have you really never—“

“It’s a private activity and it’s none of my business.”

Dean snorted. “It’s nature. Everybody masturbates.”

“Do you?”

Dean’s teeth click and he swallows compulsively, can feel his heart thumping in his neck. “I have.”

“No you haven’t.”

“Well, not recently—“

“You’ve ejaculated in your sleep nine times since Lucifer was released but you haven’t—“

“That’s different—“

“How is it different?”

“For one thing… THAT, wasn’t under my control and I sure as hell didn’t get any enjoyment out of it—“ His voice was raising defensively and Castiel’s brows were pulling down. “I—It…” Dean’s teeth tighten; “I’m not talking about this,” He turns back to the road.

Castiel keeps the silence for almost a quarter mile before he opens his mouth, and Dean really wishes he hadn’t.

“If it is natural why don’t you do it?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“Your dreams would suggest otherwise.”

“What have I told you about staying out of my head?”

“If that was a fact, I would think you would reciprocate. You’ve become quite fond of sneaking into mine.”

Dean hunches in on himself; “It’s an accident, OK? I just—I can’t control this shit like you do!”

“I’ve offered to teach you to control it on multiple occasions.”

“Then TEACH ME already! I don’t know what the hell I’m doing!”

“You managed to heal Sam well enough on your own—“

“Are you kidding me? I almost shit my pants!”

“I thought you said you were constipated.”

Dean flops his head back on his neck and lets out an explosive breath. “Cas?”

“Yes, Dean?”

“If I get spectacularly drunk tonight will you promise me that you won’t let me drown in my own vomit?”

“Ellen says your medication doesn’t mix with alcohol.”

“Fuck it,” He turns the car into the parking lot of a gas station and slams the door behind himself as he climbs out. Stomps inside and returns ten minutes later with a case of beer and a bag of ice. He spends a few minutes quiet, cracking the ice against the pavement before he pours it into the little green cooler that usually resides in the foot well of the back seat and covering the cans as much as possible. Sputnik licks at the ice cubes left in the bag and wags her tail at him expectantly. Dean tears open a bag of beef jerky and tosses a few strips onto her towel before he climbs back behind the wheel and takes off. Drives until he finds a deserted stretch of highway lined on both sides with cornfields and pulls over onto the wide berm. Slaps the car into park and kills the engine. He breathes in and out a few times and squeezes the steering wheel.

“Here’s the deal, OK, Cas… I-I don’t… I haven’t since before I got dragged downstairs. I had to once and I made myself sick because of it.”

Castiel says nothing.

He drums his fingers, feels gooseflesh rise on his arms and legs and crickets make a rush of noise outside the windows. “Things happened to me down there. I—Alistair did things to me and I did things to…”

Still nothing, but he could feel the weight of the angel’s gaze like lead.

He tried to swallow and couldn’t, his mouth was too dry; “You saw what it was like down there… If you dragged me out I know you did,” The wind shakes the corn; “But you have no idea what it felt like to be stuck down there for forty years. You don’t understand that and I hope to god you never do… The things he did to me—“ Now there’s too much in his mouth and the beef jerky smell from the back seat is charred flesh—his own charred flesh. He tilts his head back to keep from choking; “I did things when I was younger that I’m not proud of. You kind of have to when you’re in a situation like we were as kids… I’ve done things recently that I’d really rather not remember, but this—this was a whole ‘nother ballpark, Cas. He didn’t use my body… Alistair—that demon raped my soul, OK? And that’s a lot harder to deal with for me. I’d never had anyone touch my soul before and he—He just took and took and took and I couldn’t stop him. He touched pieces of me that nobody has the right to and I—” He feels Castiel looking at him but can’t meet his eyes. Can FEEL the confusion and disbelief and horror even before Castiel touches him. Even before the angel reaches out with four of his ethereal hands and seeks out the edges of everything that makes Dean DEAN. He doesn’t touch, just hovers over Dean’s feathery edges, the invisible boundary of himself

Dean swallows; “It hurt when you just touched it, OK? Imagine how it felt for him to—to do that to me.”

It’s like a light goes on in Castiel’s eyes. Like he finally GETS it. Like he understands and his invisible hands pull back, his grace retreats and he shrinks deep down into his borrowed skin until Dean can barely feel him.

Dean swallows and takes a shuddering breath; “So, no… I don’t Do It… I’ve tried and I can’t. I’m stupid and pathetic and I can’t even masturbate anymore because I’m scared.”

Castiel says nothing and about thirty feet ahead of them a heard of deer cross the road. They glow softly in rainbow colors and Dean watches them. Tries to forget what he’s just shared and the fact that he has no idea why he’s said it. Maybe it—maybe it was just time, or perhaps he was being vindictive trying to put Castiel off sex now that he knows the angel is capable of it. Maybe it makes him feel safer sharing a bed with Castiel if the other knows that Dean can’t handle it.

Maybe it was because he was sure now that Castiel had been looking into his dreams and he needed him to understand why they kept coming back almost a year after Dean’s resurrection. Why even after months and months he finds it a comfort to know this body is new, that it has never been touched by hellhounds and that an angel of the lord touched him and pulled him out of hell. Saved him…

I owe him.

He pulled me out of the pit, I owe him.

Dean swallowed again, arched his hips and reached back over the seat for the cooler, pulled out a can and handed it to the angel on his right, took one himself and popped it open. Sucked it down and cringed at the taste. Since when did beer taste like rotten apples and piss? He drank it anyway.

Castiel watched him then popped open his own can and took a sip. Then a larger drink, mimicking what Dean was doing.

“Cas?”

“Yes, Dean?”

“Can you make me forget?”

He’s quiet for a three count; “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah… I didn’t think so,” Another drink.

“Cas?”

“Dean?”

He smiled, felt his heart warm in the cold cage of his chest. It felt good. Right— “I think I know you.”

Castiel’s hair rasped against the upholstery as he turned his head.

Dean shifted in his seat, stretched out one leg and cocked the other up on the seat so he could look at him, nudged him in the calf with the toe of his boot; “Sometimes I think; ‘no, he wasn’t real. It’s just a coincidence,’ but other times you look at me, or you say something like that and I can feel it in my chest… I know you. I can feel it. Sometimes I remember things, stuff that Zechariah locked away in here,” He touches his temple with the lip of his beer can; “And I don’t always understand what I’m looking at, but I remember it—“ Another drink, “You—uh—you believe in reincarnation?”

Castiel’s brows draw down and he blinks slowly; “No.”

“No?”

“What humans call ‘reincarnation’ is far more complicated than you believe… There are rare instances where a soul can be put back on earth but that person was not reincarnated, they were ‘cleansed’. Some souls who have experienced certain events are… damaged. It is very rare and exceptional circumstances must be met to achieve such a thing. But there have been instances where a soul has shattered or been near shattering when the Reapers deliver them. The presence of a soul in such condition within Heaven could be catastrophic. Even an archangel doesn’t have the power to undo damage like that, it has to heal. So, the soul is imbued with a fragment of grace and a body is sparked into being around it. Close proximity to a mother’s soul heals it while in utero and they are born anew… “

“Like me?”

“No… You are an exception. Your soul was sealed into a facsimile of your previous body. Your memories were retained… I assume it was because of your status as Michael’s vessel.”

“And they needed my soul in here to say yes so he could fight the devil?”

“That seems to be the case.”

“So that’s the only reason they brought me back? To be Michael’s condom?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“And if I keep saying ‘no’?”

“I don’t know, Dean.”

He nodded, took another drink; “They’re not gonna stop hounding me until I give him permission are they… That’s why you’ve been putting up sigils everywhere.”

“Yes.”

"If they’re not gonna stop why bother?”

Castiel hesitates, looks at him with a perplexed expression on his face. Takes a larger than should be possible drink of his beer and tilts his head to the side; “Because giving up feels wrong to me.”

Dean looks at his drink, traces lines of condensation against the aluminum with the nail of his thumb. “If we can’t find God, do we have any chance of stopping this?”

“I don’t know.”

He sucks his teeth and nods, downs the rest of his beer and twists the can into an hourglass shape, tosses it over his head out the window and into the ditch. Castiel scowls at him, but he doesn’t really care.

0-0-0

The ride back to the motel is quiet. Sputnik is snoring in the back seat, giving little grunting bark noises as she chases something in her dreams. She doesn’t even wake when Dean opens the back door and shakes her.

“She’s dreaming.”

“I can see that,” Dean shakes his head and scoops her up wrapped in her towel and tosses her cushion to Castiel. They take the back door into the building and Dean yawns as he steps into the room. Sets the dog down and watches her toddle off and pause to stretch, back arched and tail over her head, big whining yawn and stretch the back legs out.

Castiel puts her cushion under the desk and she goes to it dragging her towel. Beds down with her head on the stinky cloth and drifts off again almost immediately.

Dean stands there for a long time staring at the beds, stomach in knots.

“You’re tense. You should get some sleep.”

Dean rubbed his face and dropped to sit on his bed, head in hands; “No, I need to get over myself and get laid.”

He heard Castiel sit on the other bed. Could feel the static like tingle under his skin of the other’s proximity and when he uncovered his face Castiel was directly in front of him, barely an inch between their knees with a serious expression on his face. “Would it help?”

“Would what help?” He felt his nose wrinkle in agitation.

“Having sex.”

He snorted; “Well, it sure as hell wouldn’t hurt anything,” He curled an arm around his waist and focused on his shoes, the flecks of mud on his toes butted up against the instep of Castiel’s.

“Dean?”

He sighed, a bone weary kind of sound that seemed to live in his chest as of late; “Yeah?”

“Why would having sex help?”

His eyes flicked to the side, delicate color rising to his cheeks; “Cas, man if you’re horny just—“

“I understand the procreative aspect, the continuation of humanity as a species… But I don’t understand the purpose of it for anything other than breeding.”

Dean hunched forward, elbows on his knees and tried to sound amused, not nervous; “You make it sound like we’re animals.”

“Technically you are. What sets humanity apart from the other creatures of the earth are your souls. No other being in all of creation has a soul as powerful.”

“Nice,” Dean rubbed a hand over his face, too tired for this philosophical nonsense. “Look, people have sex because it feels good—“

“So does masturbation and it’s a lot simpler.”

He blinked, felt himself go positively red; “And I’m done talking.”

“You promised to answer my questions if I taught you to use the grace.”

“Well I didn’t think we’d be talking about masturbating all frickin’ night.”

“We’re not. We’re talking about the purpose of recreational sex.”

Dean rubbed his face, willing the color in his cheeks away with the pressure of his fingertips; “Fuck.”

“That also. Is there a difference between casual sex and ‘fucking’?”

Dean stared at him, felt at one time humiliated and worried. He’d just heard an angel say ‘fucking’.

Castiel leaned closer, eyes just a shade too intent; “You have so many words for what is elementally the same act. There has to be a subtlety that eludes me. Human interactions are based solely on subtlety and I find it fascinating… What makes manually stimulating oneself to orgasm inferior? There is no difference between that and engaging in intercourse if the sole purpose is physical release.”

“It’s worlds different.”

“Why?”

“J-just… because. Because it’s different!”

“Why? Is copulation somehow more deeply fulfilling? Is the end result variable depending upon the number of people involved?”

“It—it’s just different, okay! It’s—“ He made a rolling gesture with his fingers and couldn’t quite make himself look Castiel in the eye. “It’s better—nicer, when there’s someone else there… J-just close and wi-willing—“ He cleared his throat, “It—“ It’s claustrophobic, crushing. Messy. You lose a part of yourself during, let yourself be possessed OWNED—tearingwantingtakingstealing bruises shaped like fingerprints and hands pinning you down—

His heart was racing and everything was moving so quickly in his head. Too quick to leave anything more than a buzzing dizziness in its wake. The world was too bright, Castiel’s voice was too loud, the smell of the room was too stale and sour and—

“Dean?”

He was closer now, voice hushed, not dangerously or with dark promise, but just quiet, softened. Castiel toned down because they both knew what was going through Dean’s head and this kind of overload didn’t need loud words and grabbing insistent hands on his person to alleviate it.

Dean breathes in and out, remembers soft delicate moments, remembers just lying between sheets looking His Cas in the eye and just—just staring and listening to the rain patter out a tattoo on the roof. Feeling like there was something MORE. That he BELONGED and was accepted without condition.

Dean didn’t have a grasp on the term intimacy, not truly. His mind, like most, went directly to sex when someone suggested being ‘intimate’. The other kind of intimacy, the soft touches and CLOSENESS, was shunned. Labeled ‘girly crap’ and hidden away under layers of bullshit. Real men didn’t like holding hands or cuddling or watching black and white films at two AM curled up in bed or on the couch when you could be naked and tangled and slick with sweat.

But when the burning afterimages and greasy feelings of being owned, USED against his will subsided, that’s where his mind went. Proximity without expectation. Acceptance and an ache between his lungs— It stole his breath and he tried to suffocate the memories, the NEED before Castiel saw again. It was bad enough he’d been tuning into Dean’s dreams while he was recharging at night but this was just unforgivable!

Dean was too focused on pushing it all down again that he didn’t immediately feel Castiel’s hands—fleeting passes of his fingertips against Dean’s jaw, his complete CLOSENESS. How Castiel’s knees were spread so he could lean closer and his calves were pressed to the outside of Dean’s own.

Dean lifted his head and found blue eyes locked on him, concern written plainly in the tiny spider lines at the corners of Castiel’s eyes, the wrinkle of confusion between his brows, gaze tilted up.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t…” His eyes flick down and Dean can see the tip of his tongue between his lips as he presses them together.

Jesus… He was so close, gentle passes of his fingers over Dean’s hair. Soothing. He didn’t even realize he’d tilted his head into the pressure until their brows collided. Just a little thump of skin pinched between skulls. A tiny little spark when Castiel’s diminished grace reached forward and hesitantly connected with his own.

This. He wanted to say. This is why people have sex… This is why I used to have sex. This is why I can’t anymore. HE took this away from me. Took everything I enjoyed about life and RUINED it… But I want this again. I want to feel OK again even if I’m not. I want it and it scares me more than being raped.

Dean looked away, down where his hands had found purchase on Castiel’s knees, let his head drop against the angel’s shoulder and couldn’t make himself move. He wanted this… so much, just wanted to feel SOMETHING—

Castiel’s hands continued their slow progression from feather light touches, barely lighting on his skin, to the firm, smooth comb of fingers against his scalp.

Ellen had done this, in the time after Dean had spoken to her that first time over Castiel’s unconscious form, sometimes she would find him and they would sit or she would come into his room where he’d been hiding in bed and pull a pillow onto her lap, tug on his hair and just—just touch him without any kind of purpose. Just to slowly reacclimatize him to it. She’d done the same thing back at the hotel the night she Jo and Bobby had shown up to help Sam. She’d listened when he said he didn’t want to be touched and just let him relax while she sat there with him.

But this—CAS—this warm ACHE in his chest was new—so new and familiar and he shook with the intensity of it. He felt weak and stupid and vulnerable, but he was just—just so tired of everything. Talking on the phone with Ellen every evening didn’t help, not really. It just vented enough of the pressure to keep him going another day.

Before, he would have gone out and downed enough alcohol to cause a noticeable decline in his liver function. In truth he wished he still could, but the threat of what could happen if he mixed booze with those little bitter pills, one beer was as much as he dared. He needed to be sharp, needed to stay on his toes to keep that asshole Zechariah at bay. To keep himself as HIMSELF. Who knew what would happen if Michael descended while Dean was out of his head. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d said ‘yes’ while drunk despite knowing better.

There was no escape from this. No soursweet burn of whiskey down his throat to chase the ache and emptiness away. No perfumed neck to litter with kisses and hickeys. No shadow eyed stranger to make him forget his name for even just a little while. No Ellen to talk him down and listen then tell him that he would be OK. There was just this intolerable CRACK in his chest that yawned and gnawed at him. A feeling of desolation and longing for something that was never real. This intolerable yearning for soft nothings whispered into his hair and the solid press of his Cas against his back. Strong arms folded around him and all the things his mind had conjured up in dreams and fantasies. Those not quite solid memories that had been just out of reach in his head months now that screamed of familiarity. Of KNOWING and being KNOWN. Being LOVED.

He wanted someone to tell him it was going to be OK, but more than that, he wanted to believe it. He wanted to FEEL like things could be OK again because right now nothing felt OK, nothing had in a long LONG while.

He tilted his head up again, felt Castiel’s breath against his face still smelling slightly of beer. Felt the weight of his gaze like a solid mass; one hand cupping his jaw, the other scratching lightly through the hair at the back of his head.

His eyes were so blue. Just right—Perfect. His hair unkempt and scratchy little prickles on his chin and jaws. Skin a little pale from the chill of the room—cheeks tinged a little pink.

Dean knows what’s going to happen before there’s really any movement. Knows and thinks it plainly in his head; _He’s going to kiss me._ And his heart beats a little faster against the cage of his ribs. A little harder but it’s not excitement, it’s not enjoyment.

He’s scared.

He’s scared because as much as he wants this to be His Cas, it’s not. This is Castiel, the angel. The thing that is wearing some poor guy like a cheap suit. Some poor guy who has no say as to what happens to him—

Dean leans away just as Castiel moves forward. Pulls back with a startled breath and flattens his hands against the angel’s chest—pushes.

“Don’t…” He breathes in, holds it for a second and lets it out. “Don’t.”

“You said it would help—“

Dean looks at him and feels something in his core snap, feels bitter and spiteful and angry so suddenly it leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Thinks of Jimmy locked away in there unknowing of what Castiel is doing with his body; “I don’t—No. NO.”

“Dean—“

He knocks the angel’s hands away and draws in on himself; “Go… Just go away.”

Castiel stares at him, confused, uncertain, but his shoulders square and he pushes to his feet, turns and leaves the room as if he finds the idea of manually putting distance between himself and Dean novel. Some kind of absurdity he can’t quite comprehend. Like why someone would want to have sex if they had no intention of ‘breeding’.

Dean sits there for a long time staring at the wrinkles in the quilt across from him, cold shivers of phantom hands up and down his spine. His nose is running, he has no idea why, rubs it dry on his wrist and a crumpled tissue he yanked from the box on the side table.

His hands were shaking and it took more out of him than he wanted to admit to choke down his evening medication. So much so he didn’t bother undressing for bed, just hunched his shoulders and rolled to the center of the bed facing the door, drew his knees up and pressed his hands together between them. It had become his default position, closing himself off to everything around him. Shoulders hunched and body coiled defensively. It didn’t make him feel any safer, if anything he felt childish, twisting himself into some warped fetal position—pathetic. You’re pathetic.

He slept not because he wanted to but because he couldn’t stop it. Slept deep and long and woke suddenly—

He was not in the same room he’d fallen asleep in. Not by any stretch of the imagination. The walls were soot stained and crumbling and the whole front of the building was gone, a mess of moldering insulation and twisted rusty piping overlooking a street like something out of Terminator-2.

Dean fell out of bed, pressed himself into the corner near where the door should have been with wide eyes, heart beating quickly—frantically.

_I knew it._

_Jesus CHRIST I knew it!_

Apparently Alistair had gotten tired of trying to break him with the Cas face and had moved on to something slightly more colorful.

He breathed in and out, pushed down the fear and sickness rising in his chest with the realization that none of it had been real. He’d been right to doubt, to fear. But it hurt—it still hurt so much because he’d wanted—The look in Castiel’s eyes, the warmth in his hands. The realization when Dean had explained WHY to him. He’d wanted—ACHED for it in a way he never had before.

It had felt so _real…_

_But it’s not. It’ll never be real. Who could ever love something like you?_

He hid his face in his knees and held his breath, tried to find some kind of calm in the hammer of his heart.

“As much as I appreciate your little paranoid delusions, Dean. You’re barking up the wrong banana tree and I need you focused.”

Dean lifted his face, eyes blurry with moisture and spotted a bald head above an immaculately pressed silk suit. He couldn’t swallow past the rock in his throat. Couldn’t make himself speak—could barely breathe.

“This is real, I promise you. If there was a way for me to get it into that thick skull of yours that you really are out of Hell short of taking you back to show you, I would. It’s very stressful having to drag you back from the brink every five seconds… Like trying to train a Pomeranian!” He sighed and rubbed some imaginary grit between his fingers; “But, not as stressful as trying to find you. We had to sink to pretty unconventional levels.”

Dean sucked in a strained breath and let it out slowly, pressed his nails into his arms until the skin gave way.

Zechariah blinked at him and motioned to the ruin of a city outside the window; “Welcome to two-thousand-fourteen! Or at least, what two-thousand-fourteen will be like if you continue to defy Michael… Think of it as a kind of preview of what will happen if you don’t embrace your purpose,” He smiles and it is by no means a pleasant expression; “So, take some time—a little vacation if you will. See the sights, relax, unwind.”

Dean’s lips pulled back from his teeth; “Take me back, right now!” He pushed forward, reached for Zechariah with the intent of gouging his eyes out but the angel took a step backward with all six hands up, knocked Dean’s grace back with the breadth of his wings; “Now I’m not here to fight. If I wanted to fight I would have burned that nonsense out of you when I got into your hotel room. Real smart sending Castiel away, Dean. Left yourself defenseless when those pills kicked in. Ivy League, that’s you.”

Dean’s lips rolled back from his teeth.

“This is your Ebenezer Scrooge moment. I’m just the angel of Christmas Future… So, take your time, enjoy the— _fruits_ of your labors,” He clasped his hands together again, stood there like the fucking image of perfection amid the destruction; “See you in three days.”

And he was gone in a thunderous rush of wings.

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

 

 


	34. He Got the Whole Wide World in His Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More either Friday or Saturday depending on my schedule.

0-0-0

 

34; He Got the Whole Wide World in HIS Hands

0-0-0

Dean doesn’t really want to leave the room, in truth he would be quite happy to just sit there for the next three days. But as he’s sitting there, staring at the place where Zechariah had been he is overwhelmed with a strange—hollow feeling of isolation. It’s choking, suffocating.

It takes him a few minutes to realize what it is but when he does it’s like a slap to the face.

Before that moment the grace Castiel had stuffed into his chest had been able to feed and grow on the radiating power of heaven, or so Castiel himself had said… in as many words. Dean had told him he was full of shit that he didn’t feel anything ‘FEEDING’ inside him, but now—yeah, now he got it.

It was like being really thirsty in the summer heat, tipping an icy cold beer to your lips—and finding nothing in the can. Not even a drop.

His grace reached out into the void and there was nothing there to grasp on to.

He felt like a baby oddly enough. Like those squalling infants in car seats their parents toted around grocery stores. Crying because they were so hungry and tired and didn’t understand why.

Dean understood though, it took him a minute, but he understood. His grace was reaching for something that wasn’t there.

Jesus Christ, if he couldn’t pull from it how was he going to charge Cas back—

“Cas,” He feels every muscle in his body tighten as the name passes his lips and the world around him becomes horrifically clear. Where the hell is Cas!

He pushes to his feet, follows the edge of the wall with his hand and peers out into the street through the hole in the wall. There’s no sign of his car, so maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe Cas isn’t here?

_If this is the future, then where is everyone? Wouldn’t that mean that I’m out there somewhere? That Cas is out there somewhere?_

He searches his pocket for his cell phone, flips it open and searches for a signal—all he gets is beeping. ‘No Service Available’. And the date at the bottom of the screen read September 9, 2014.

Well, okay then.

There is no electricity in the building and it takes Dean about ten minutes of feeling along the walls in the stairwell to find an axe to break down the lobby door. His muscles acheBURN as he swings it, carving out a chunk of the wall because he knows better than to take an axe to a metal fire door. He’d rather not be impaled, thank you.

He gets the door open and it takes another twenty minutes of pushing at the rubble and debris to actually get OUT of the building. By that time his body hurts all over from the strain and he has come to the conclusion that yes, he really does need help because he shouldn’t be this goddamned weak! Yeah, he’s had to poke a few new holes in his belt to get his pants to stay up, but he hasn’t lost that much muscle mass… has he? This whole ‘eating disorder’ crap Ellen kept mentioning was just crap, right? He ate. Yeah. Food was awesome… until the meat in his sandwiches turned to putrid flesh in his mouth, or the soda became hydrochloric acid. Or until everything just became a living WEIGHT in his stomach—choking him and he had to get it out—had to just- Get. It. OUT.

He wracked his brain, imagined himself traversing endless branching hallways throwing open shabby motel doors with crooked numbers and sifting through the contents of his memories. When was the last time he’d actually been able to eat a full meal and not feel like his heart was going to leap out of his mouth? When was the last time he’d had a piece of pie?

It was like plunging head first into cold water.

He hadn’t.

The whole time he’d been back. Maybe Bobby’s grilled cheese sandwiches, but even those had begun to sour on his stomach after a while.

He paused in the hotel lobby in front of a grungy cracked mirror and looked at himself, just for a second. Saw lank hair a good inch and a half too long, a drawn pale face over baggy clothes and thought—that can’t be me.

But it was. He saw that face every morning in the mirror and tried to ignore it.

He breathed deep, images of Sam in a hospital bed flashing behind his eyes and he turned away, put distance between himself and the mirror, thought; I’m fine, I just need to eat more and I’ll be fine. Then walked out into the street.

0-0-0

There was a smell on the wind, bitter, like barbecue—BURNINGFLESH— And a weird haze hung in the air. He’d been in ghost towns before that weren’t this—this eerie. Ghost towns, actually, were a lot easier to deal with. The architecture was always familiar in a way movie sets are, they never seemed real or struck him as places that had been built and lived in. Yeah, he knew they had, but there was just a kind of cultural distance where unless he had seen it happening, unless he had seen it inhabited, the fact of it didn’t exactly hit home. Like abandoned buildings didn’t seem like they meant anything other than a potential home for your various supernatural nasties. This place—this CITY—struck something in him. Some chord that resonated deeper into himself than he’d let just about anything since he’d come back.

This was a city. A modern city—One he’d been in before and seen thriving and bustling with activity, now it was bombed out, decaying and wet. Like a rotting corpse. Yeah, this wasn’t a city, it was an urban corpse. Broken windows and collapsed buildings the jutting bones, the debris in the street its maggot riddled oozing flesh.

Hell, it even smelled like death in a few places. Dark cramped alleyways littered with ripped open garbage bags and the occasional shell casing. Crumpled cars and burned out wrecks with blackened forms that could only be bones scattered in the rusted interiors.

Part of him was disconnected from it, equated what he was seeing with Hollywood special-effects. But there was no mistaking the smells. Dean had spent his whole life and forty years in hell becoming intimately acquainted with that smell.

Rot and fire and damp. Kerosene and bone fragments.

Dean’s palms were sweaty and he rubbed them dry on his thighs, moved slowly, cautiously forward. Always forward. Stretching out by inches with his grace looking for something—anything. A fucking RAT or a cockroach, anything man! This place was just—it was TOO lifeless.

There weren’t even any fucking flies buzzing around the garbage! It was just sitting there slowly molding.

His vision flickered and stuttered, washed out into dull grays and Dean took a moment to just stare at the ground under his feet. The glow of the earth was bright, so much brighter than he’d ever seen it. But everything else. The buildings, the cars, the children’s toys scattered around in odd places. Were colorless. Weird. So—so weird.

Everything had glowed before, had been stained maybe, by a human’s soul. Kids toys shimmered, favorite shirts, boots, Sam’s fucking laptop—

There was a noise. He felt it prickling his skin before it even happened.

Breaking glass and a soft sobbing noise.

Dean was of the opinion that ‘if it needs to be punched, I’ll punch it’. He didn’t like raising a hand to women, it made something in his gut feel tight, but that wasn’t to say he wouldn’t do it if it became necessary. Demons and that one time they’d been attacked by some crazy chick in Columbus Ohio who’d had too much meth and was trying to rip Sam’s goddamned ears off. If the situation called for it, Dean did what he had to do. Didn’t like it, but them’s the breaks, yanno?

Possessed or not some shrimpy little girl with matted hair and blood coming outta her eyes comes at Dean with a broken piece of glass aiming for his jugular? No, that’s not gonna fly.

FUCKING Christ—

The worst thing, maybe, is the fact that the wound doesn’t hurt right away. It takes him about a dozen long strides before he notices his shirt is wet and when he looks there’s a gouge shaped like a checkmark across his ribs dripping down do his hip already.

He curses bitterly under his breath and looks around, feels sweat prickling in the small of his back and puts a hand to it, breathes IN and pushes it out slowly, feels at the edges of the wound with his grace and focuses on it, tries to remember what he’d done to heal Sam but hard as he tries he can’t figure it out and all he manages to do is grow a headache.

It takes about another thirty minutes of skulking around before he notices it. A pattern to all the graffiti. Morbid outlines of bodies on the pavement or against buildings, slumped against the crumpled hoods of cars.

Shapes covered over by layers of spray paint and hidden beneath piles of rubble. Something tingles in his skin and he tilts his head a little farther to the right, steps deeper into an alleyway and—

And there it is in big dripping—oozing like blood—letters.

Like a kindergartener scrawling their name on everything to claim it as their own. Croatoan has claimed Kansas City, has written its name in blood and ash and desolation and that rat bastard Zechariah has set Dean down right in the middle of it.

Dean hears them before he sees them. Can feel that tingle in his skin growing to a sensation like the hairs along his arms and legs and even on his head were trying to wriggle their way to freedom.

Someone kicks a garbage can and suddenly there are six men standing in front of him. All of them bloody at the edges, dirty and drooling—and their eyes. Pupils blown wide the little red veins in the whites of their eyes burst and turned black at the edges. Twisting like roots into the flesh. They stop and stare at him, nostrils flared—sniffing—

Dean isn’t exactly sure who screams first. But he’s not going to hang around long enough to find out.

He runs. He runs and hopes that he can run faster scared than these things can mad because he doesn’t know if Zechariah would find it in his cold black shriveled heart to pull Dean’s ass out of the fire again without first securing a ‘yes’.

Maybe that’s what this is about? Maybe he’s dropped Dean down here like some twisted life or death game of Survivor. Maybe he plans to leave Dean here until he does agree. Or let him turn into one of those demonic things and burn a yes out of him.

No. NONONONONONONO!

There is a fence.

One of those double fence things like he remembers seeing around prisons. About fifteen feet tall, chain link and topped in razor wire.

Dean is athletic. He’s damned good at climbing things and wriggling into small spaces. But there is no way in HELL he can get over all that razor wire without getting cut to ribbons. He’d encountered it before, had—Used to have—a scar across his palm where his middle index and ring finger met his palm. He’d sliced his hand open to the bone with that shit when he was seventeen and it was Sam’s quick thinking and lead foot that kept Dean from losing function in those fingers. He was NOT keen on experiencing that again.

Why had he sent Cas away? WHY had he sent Cas away!

He reached out with his grace, just spread himself out as thin and wide as he could manage and screamed into the darkness— ** _CAS!_**

It was quick. Like the first lightning bug in early spring. If he hadn’t become so familiar with it being so near to Castiel, he wouldn’t have felt it at all. Just a little hiccupping flare in his periphery. It was so sudden and such a relief that when the tan Humvee appeared on the other side of the fence, for a moment, Dean couldn’t think—Didn’t jump at the fence as he’d planned, but just kind of froze. Ran face first into it and bounced off, hit the ground just as the sergeant behind the wheel flipped on the radio and the corporal on the guns opened fire one handed, Schnapps to his lips.

Dean hit the ground hard, wheezed out in distress as the air was forced out of his body and rolled in on himself like a pill bug, fought to his hands and knees and took off for an alleyway before he’d even caught his breath, bullets ripping the air behind him in quick succession _ratatatatatatatat_ against the brick and pavement.

His vision narrowed and darkened at the edges and he tripped over a pile of garbage bags, went down on his chest, palms ripping against the asphalt, amulet turned and stabbing into his chest just above that sensitive dip of scar tissue. He didn’t think, just forced himself up and kept moving, teeth ground together, the taste of blood in his mouth, world BURNING with color around him.

Yes, he recognized it now. Not gray, not colorless. BLACK. Everything was burning BLACK.

He may not be back in hell, but this was as close to it as he wanted to ever get—closer.

He ran until he couldn’t breathe, until his vision tunneled out to pinpricks and when he came back to himself he was sitting hunched in the V created by a crashed armored truck and what had once been a bank. It took a long while to get his breathing under control. Even longer to coax himself out of hiding. Too many repetitions of ‘Come on, Dean. Don’t be a pussy’ in his father’s voice, and ‘It’s OK, you can do this’ in Ellen’s.

His chest hurt from trying to breathe while he ran. Ached and BURNED and scratched when he tried to draw air. He eased out picked his movements five blocks ahead, headed west and hoped against hope that what he’d felt flare up had actually been Cas. Hell, maybe he was stuck here too. Maybe he could help.

Getting OUT of the city wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be. Twice more he found himself running but these groups were slower and if he was smart about it, easily outrun. It didn’t help his lungs any though. Didn’t help the HURT in his muscles from the effort or the fear that he may not survive this.

Angels were still an unknown. He didn’t know what they could do, what they couldn’t, what they were capable of and what their rules were. What was to say Zechariah wouldn’t just drop him off here and let him get infected with this virus to MAKE him say yes. The bastard had lied before. Had made Dean think he’d had a stroke and was dying and going back to hell. He’d broken Sam’s SPINE and shot Castiel—tried to KILL them.

He needed help.

He NEEDED HELP.

He needed research, a way to STOP HIM.

Bobby. He needed Bobby.

It was actually kind of funny when you thought about it. Seeing all the cars crashed on the highway, keys still in the ignition, just sitting there.

There were quite a few even with Gas still in their tanks.

Dean found a pickup about two miles out of the city with the logo for a local green house on the side, half hidden under bloody handprints. There are an assortment of tools in the back in a big tool chest. Dean takes a hatchet, a pair of bolt cutters—he thinks they might actually be some kind of pruning shears, but beggars can’t be choosers— the five gallon gas can and cuts off a six foot section of garden hose to use as a syphon.

It takes four cars to get enough gas that isn’t flooded with particulates from sitting for so long, to fill up the can and another half dozen to find one in a position to be moved that still has inflated tires and a battery that isn’t dead.

He feels like he’s being watched, like the burning skin on the back of his neck is awash in something’s otherworldly gaze.

He gets the car turned around, settles the gas can in the trunk—which thankfully hadn’t had any bodies stuffed in it, just a couple boxes of knickknacks and old lady clothes. He uses an off white blouse to bandage his side, wraps himself in duct tape to hold it down and settles behind the wheel in an exhausted slump.

Everything hurts. He’s dehydrated, he’s lost a little more blood than he’s comfortable with and he’s five years into the future in an old car that smells like octogenarian and molding sponge.

He drives.

The highways are deserted, every so often there will be a car plowed into the median or burned out on the berm. There’s a commuter jet crashed into the opposite lane, a scorched shell with cars wreathed around in in some kind of rusted circle of mourning.

Dean breathes in and out, coughs at the raw burn in his throat and rubs one of the sigils Castiel had been drawing everywhere into the dashboard with his own blood. PUSHES a little grace into it and hopes for the best.

It takes twelve hours to get to South Dakota. Would have taken longer but Dean didn’t see the point of doing the speed limit when there were no other people on the road. He passes a few oil wells that are on fire. Leaving black sticky smoke smears on the windshield.

He tries not to look into crashed cars on the highway, tries not to notice the glow of wildfires in the distance, or the burned out remains of towns as he drives through them.

The BURN in his throat has turned into a steady cough by the time he makes it. Finds the gate padlocked shut and warding symbols melted into the gate with what looks like an acetylene torch but might have been Castiel’s finger, there’s a whorl like the pad of his index finger in one of them so Dean isn’t so sure what to think. Part of him wants to cut the lock and drive in, another thinks, maybe he shouldn’t.

It’s just barbed wire up top so Dean scales the fence, swings himself over and lands hard on the other side, winds up crouched there for a while with a hand on his side because it feels like he’s split himself open from armpit to asshole.

He calls out as he approaches the house. Feels a hole open up in his chest when he sees a wheelchair ramp leading up to the back porch. Its framed aluminum looks like one of those freight ramps off refer trucks, probably is now that he thinks about it. Sam’s Prius is parked at an angle to the porch, the hood is up and there are weeds growing up through the grille.

The windows of the house are boarded up and everything is quiet—too quiet.

“Bobby?” He keeps hold of the hatchet as he makes his way inside. Knocks a pattern on the door, waits for an answer, or a gut full of rock salt, but none comes. He pushes the door open , stares into the interior of the house with a dry throat and pounding heart.

There’s nobody there. The house is practically empty. Looks like there may have been squatters camping out inside, but…

All of Bobby’s books are gone, most of his furniture. What is left looks scorched—scorched in some kind of pattern like—like the points of daggers or big snake scales or—

Dean feels something in his chest catch and he can feel ash on his fingers, even if there isn’t any. He steps back, kicks up the stained molding rug and stares at the pattern burned into the floor of Bobby’s library.

Huge WINGS.

Something feels WRONG about it. How the color of the world is absent in that exact pattern. Wings and hands—only five—

Why are there only five hands? Where did the sixth go?

Dean shuffles around the scar and goes to the mantle. Bobby had a hidey hole behind a loose brick. Had kept things safe there in case he was ever robbed, or worse yet sent to prison.

Mostly it was just his fake IDs and badges, anything that could get him a federal charge. Bobby was the master of hiding things. Dean had teased him a few times that he was part hobgoblin for how well he could hide something in plain sight. All his little niches and hollows. The tunnel he’d dug in the back room of the basement under the fake floor of the old furnace that lead under the yard to an exit in the old well by the pond Dean used to catch frogs in as a kid. He hadn’t been out there in years.

This hole though, held a lore book on death and reapers, a couple thousand in cash—Dean was gonna ask for a loan when he got back—and Bobby’s journal. It was a lot more tattered and stained than Dean remembered it being just a few weeks ago—years, he had to tell himself. Not that it hadn’t already been tattered and stained. But now there was a symbol burned into the leather on the front and on the brass clasp holding it shut. Dean didn’t recognize it. Had never seen anything like it before. A circle through which had been drawn a few geometric lines and some kind of script. It—it was beautiful to look at, and he KNEW it meant something, but he didn’t know what. He didn’t have any trouble opening the book though, so he didn’t give it much thought other than it must be to ward against something. But, why would Bobby leave it here?

He paged through it, found the last few entries dated almost two years before.

_November 9 th 2012, Dean, Castiel and Jo went out to set up the place. It’s going to be tough leaving but I don’t got much of a choice there’s no room and no time. I suppose I’ll scatter her ashes in Nebraska, seems kind of fitting. Should be back by Monday if I don’t find trouble._

_If I do? Well I’ve still got one bullet left._

There’s a picture. Stuffed in between that page and the next. Slightly lopsided, black and white, taken by Bobby’s old Kodac Landscape. The kind you’ve got to peal the flags off the—

There’s Castiel.

There’s Dean.

Castiel’s holding a gun and there’s something wrongwrongWRONG about his eyes. About the bruise at the corner of his lips, the wry distant grin on his face.

Dean doesn’t look much different than he does now. His hair’s a little longer and there’s a scar under his jaw, slanting upward to his chin, like he got a little too friendly with someone’s knife.

There’s Bobby and Jo, side by side, with focused looks on their faces. There’s some kid that looks familiar but Dean can’t think of his name. He’s standing to Castiel’s other side with an expression like he doesn’t quite understand what’s going on. The air above his head is blurred—a little too bright—the same with Castiel’s. It-it’s almost… Almost like a reflection. But of what?

Sam’s not in the picture.

Neither is Ellen.

Ellen—

_I’ll scatter her ashes in Nebraska—_

Dean feels his knees shaking but through some force of will and maybe locked knees, he manages to stay on his feet.

It’s not that difficult to find, he pages through Bobby’s journal and finds the first mention of Chitaqua in April of 2011, that Rufus had moved out there after the eastern seaboard had flooded.

Michigan. Okay. He can do that.

There is no electricity in the house and the public water isn’t running, but when Dean goes down stairs the panic room is still there, door rusted open. The well water Bobby had patched from the house’s original piping into it was still flowing. He had to kick the pump a little and hold the tap open, but eventually the rust build up broke away and the water that dribbled out was clear. It tasted of iron but it was cold and wet and Dean bent toward the basin and cupped water to his mouth until his belly sloshed.

He worked by lantern light, focused on his breathing and cleaned out the wound on his side. Stitched it with some dental floss he’d found in the upstairs bathroom and a needle he kept in a plastic envelope in his wallet.

His hands shook and the needle was slippery with blood but with the help of the pliers on his utility knife he managed it. Knotted the string as best he could and took an hour or two to rest amid the sigils painted on the wall and floor. Safe and alone and so SUFFOCATED by the lack of contact to his grace.

He owed Castiel an apology when he got back. The question of whether or not he WOULD get back was unavoidable, but he was doing a damned good job of it. He stole Bobby’s garden hose, a decrepit old green thing that was stiff and practically immovable. But he didn’t know if he would have to steal gas from a station or out of someone’s tank on the way. He’d had to stop four times on the way from Kansas City to Bobby’s and was prepared to make another four before he reached Chitaqua.

Sam’s Prius was empty, so was Bobby’s old truck and the few junkers that looked like they may possibly run. Dean pushed the garden hose out through the crack in the gate and climbed over again. Took his time climbing down instead of just dropping this time, and went back to the car he’d stolen. He found two gallons of gas in the tank of a police cruiser crashed into a phone pole. That went into the tank. Another half-gallon in a lawn mower in someone’s shed. Four dry tanks and Dean gave up for a little while. Stopped at a station on his way out of South Dakota and pried up one of the tank lids in the parking lot. Found lots of old diesel but no gas.

The rest stop on the highway had a lawn mower and three two gallon cans filled with gas and only about two inches of sediment. It worked anyway, got enough gas to get halfway there at least. Dean rationalized that the closer to civilization—or at least habitation—he got the harder it would be to find gas, so whenever he could he stopped and looked for gas cans and a little bit of fuel. Felt like he was driving a bomb with all that fluid sloshing around in cans in the trunk and back seat. He white knuckled his way along with the windows rolled down to keep the smell of it from choking him any more than he already was.

The ride was more tolerable with water in his stomach and the gritty aftertaste of Freeze Dried Chicken Parmesan from the MER hoard at a state police station. He’d found it scattered in the garage not far from a few spent shell casings, gathered it up in an old milk crate and said adios.

His lungs still burned and the coughing was more painful as time went on, but he ignored it. The sound of his own breathing and coughing was less bothersome than the static on the radio.

He tipped the last half gallon of gas into the tank and drove until the car coasted to a stop, loaded his pockets with packets of read-eat-‘food’. Then started walking.

If the map he’d found was right—and he was sure it was—he was five miles from Chitaqua. Used to be a county 4-H camp in the summer. Then Boy Scouts, then hunters.

The road was rutted. Worn down by the beat of tires and Dean could feel something—a presence, in the air around him the nearer he got.

The camp sign had been spray painted. Someone thought it was funny to replace the ‘C’ in Chitaqua with an ‘S’.

Dean paced the perimeter peering in at the softly lit windows, listening for any sign of life.

What sounds there were, were hushed; whispers, soft footsteps against aging floorboards.

Someone in one of the cabins was having sex. Dean could pick out the rhythmic squeak of bedsprings and the huff of effort. A woman was moaning softly along with the grunting of her partner and the energy flying off of them was practically visible. Like fireworks in a distant town.

Dean tried not to focus on it too much, but it was kind of difficult not to and as he passed close to the cabin he could hear the rasp of need in their voices.

Then there was a flash—a brief, dying kind of glitter and Dean craned his neck, blinked and felt his middle tighten up like someone had stuck a fist in there and started squeezing.

He could see a familiar outline against the night. Twisted, crumpled and layered in rust and soot—but undeniable.

SOME SON OF A BITCH WRECKED MY CAR!

He pushed himself through the gap in the gate and moved forward with his heart in his mouth. He remembered the bent crimped—CRUSHEDWRONGNESS of her when that demon asshole in the coal truck had plowed into them—when Dad had—

He felt violated. Felt shaky and sick and HURT that this had happened.

If she’s in this shape, where the hell am I! I’d have to be dead to—

It wasn’t the motion that alerted him to another’s presence. In fact he had no clue someone had stepped up behind him until well after he’d woken up. If anything, it was the fact that his grace had shut up, had stopped squalling like a baby for attention that should have alerted him to something being wrong.

But Dean hadn’t spent the last two years listening to it roar as it died out.

The man unconscious in the dirt hadn’t spent the last seven-hundred and fifty two days watching the world die around him, knowing that it was his fault. Because he was selfish and conceited and hadn’t been willing to make a sacrifice to save the world.

HE had though. HE HAD and the moment the void in his chest had silenced itself, had connected with another grace, he knew. Someone was here.

It hadn’t been who he had wanted, not by any means, but perhaps this was better. Perhaps this was right.

Dean stood there looking down at himself and wondered nothing really. He’d learned to stop being surprised by all the bullshit that happened. Had started rolling with the punches. Started just existing.

It was freeing, not caring. But now this—Now this—this ASSHOLE had to show up and poked holes in his defenses.

He bent, caught the back of the other’s jacket and hefted him up, dragged him up the steps and into the cabin, shut and locked the doors, pulled down all the window shades and went to the bed, grabbed the nearest post and PULLED. Dragged it out to the middle of the floor and sat to work.

0-0-0

Dean woke with a gasp—coughedcoughedcoughed until he couldn’t breathe and wheezed until he could.

The world around him was awash in color. Dull colors. Silvers and the encroaching tendrils of black. And amid it all there was something else. Something EMPTY.

“Don’t even think about it.”

Dean stared. Couldn’t quite understand what he was seeing. It just—just wouldn’t CLICK in his head. Some part of his psyche just looked, said ‘NOPE!’ and checked out. Went on vacation to the Bahamas. I’ll send you a postcard.

Dean looked at himself. The Himself from the photo in Bobby’s journal. Scar under his chin, hair dirty and laying on his forehead and neck. There was a bloody looking scrape on his cheek and a bruise under his eye and he had Dean’s hatchet on his lap, was sharpening it in slow long strokes with his whetstone.

“Think about what?”

A snort; “You’re not that dumb… Go ahead. Try to get out of those,” He shifts in his seat, squares his shoulder and straightens out his right leg. Dean blinks in response. Thinks there’s something not quite right about this picture, but can’t put his finger on it.

He pulls on his binds. Some kind of rope.

He’s tied up.

The Other smiles and it is by no means attractive. It pulls his face up into something bitter and pleased and dark. “Funny thing… That grace we’ve got? It reacts to the same things Angels do.

Dean feels his lips pull back from his teeth and he tears his gaze away, tilts his head back and stares at what’s binding his wrists—

It—OH JESUS CHRIST!

The ropes are blackened, not by energy, but by blood. Dean can feel it—Can SEE the GLOW of it all colorless and WHITE!

Dean thinks of the wings burned out on Bobby’s study floor, thinks of what’s keeping him still and feels the fear—the rage bubbling up in his chest like acid;

“Where’s Cas!”

The Other turns back to sharpening the hatchet.

Dean’s voice comes out louder than he’d intended—it RANG in his ears with purpose and intent and the light above them flickered; **“What the hell did you do to Cas!”**

The Other lifts his head slowly and what happens next Dean will swear later, was impossible because this Dean, this future version of himself, had been without the presence of heaven to feed his grace for years—YEARS, but the aura—the POWER that pressed back against Dean in that instant was like a freight train to Dean’s butterfly.

 **“How long have you been back? A year? And nobody’s taught you not to piss on people shoes?”** He pushes himself up and something sounds wrong about his footsteps. Something—something’s NOT RIGHT—

Dean flinches back from him, bares his teeth and snarls like a wild animal. WRITHES when The Other puts his left knee on the bed and yanks up his shirt, catches the tape holding down his bandages and tears it up.

Dean sees the wound on his side from the corner of his eye—can see red lines streaking up from it toward his chest—how the line of the cut has darkened and is riddled with pus—His eyes widen and his protests die in his throat. It hadn’t looked like that when he’d left Bobby’s. He—why can’t he FEEL it!

The Other breathes in deeply and lets it out, nostrils flared and pupils dilated. “It hurts at first… For about six hours or so, then it doesn’t anymore… It’ll spread—you’ll think you’re gonna die,” He swallows a lump in his throat, “But then it goes away.”

Dean watches as The Other lays his hand over the wound—it doesn’t feel like much of anything at first, not until he notices a reddish glow coming through The Other Dean’s hand and he remembers pressing his palms to the chapel door in Ilchester, helping Castiel BURN though to get to Sam.

It’s more of an ache than anything. The kind of ache of frostbitten skin slowly thawing. It’s brief and when he lifts his hand away Dean sees the infection is gone. The stitches are gone and there’s only a thin line of red scar tissue that fades to silver as he watches. He shivers, looks up into a face that is at once his own and not; “What was that?”

The Other doesn’t answer, not directly. “Sam was immune to it. First few times he got exposed nothing happened. I figured it was because of the demon blood thing… But I don’t think that’s it. Not really, because when I got exposed…” He shrugged one shoulder, like it didn’t mean anything. Like he was commenting on the weather. “Cas thinks it’s because of the grace.”

Dean swallows; “Where’s Cas?”

He doesn’t answer, stands up and walks—wrongwrongwrong—to the door, peers out and goes back to his chair. Sits and picks up the hatchet again. Continues sharpening it.

Dean pulls on the ropes again; “Why aren’t you freaking out about this?”

“After five years on a constant diet of apocalypse, your tolerance for weird goes way up.”

Dean squints at him.

The Other Dean squints back, “You’re not a shifter. Shifters are brown at the edges, just like ghouls and revenants. You’re not a demon because you don’t have a color and the only one who doesn’t have a color is me, so. It’s kind of a process of elimination… That and you didn’t react to anything.”

“You cut me?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“How do I know you’re not—“

“Same rules apply,” He pulled back the sleeve of his shirt and Dean stared, the skin there was mangled. Layers of scars over scars, like he’d stuck his arm in a wood chipper.

Dean wants to be sick. Twists a little harder.

“You’re not getting out of that. You can try all you want, but it’s not happening.”

“What, you don’t trust me?”

“Not even slightly.”

Dean snorted. Didn’t stop twisting his hands.

“What I can’t figure out is how you got here. Where you came from.”

Dean breathes in and out; “Uh… Would you believe me if I said I was from the past?”

The Other Snorts; “And I would believe that why?”

“Zechariah.”

“Zechariah?”

“He sent me here to show me what would happen if I kept saying ‘No’.”

The hatchet hits the floor and The Other’s chair clatters back he stands so quickly. “Zechariah brought you here?” He doesn’t give Dean time to answer, stabs a finger at the ground and raises his voice so it shakes the air in Dean’s sinuses; “You call that son of a bitch down here right now!”

“I can’t! I CAN’T!”

“You do it now!”

“Jesus CHRIST! I CAN’T he LEFT ME HERE! He said he’ll be back in three days! That he wants me to learn my lesson and—“

The Other stalks over and bends close, braces his hands on the pillow to either side of Dean’s and leans in so closely Dean can smell whiskey on his breath, wonders if this version of himself is immune to seizures as well. If he would share the secret because Dean hasn’t wanted a drink more than he does at that moment.

“You stupid—STUPID—“ He breathes in and something shakes in him, something reaches out and grabs Dean—SHAKES him. “You say ‘yes’ right now! RIGHT NOW!”

“No!”

He feels it before it happens. Feels The Other’s hands on him before it happens and everything in him recoils from the touch because something is so WRONG. His grace lashes out—EXPLODES like a light bulb and everything goes black for a while. Quiet.

Empty—

Dean finds himself standing in the street. It’s empty. Everything around him is quiet and there is a kid.

A little girl.

She’s about ten, maybe eleven, with knotted blonde hair bleached white by the sun a purple and pink striped shirt that’s been cut off halfway up her torso. An acid washed denim skirt and red cowboy boots that are about half a size too big for her. She has on a jacket, it’s jungle cammo. The kind that his Dad had worn in Nam apparently. There’s a patch on it still, a name badge. Says ‘Shipley’ in all caps. . . She’s standing there on the corner looking at him. Looking right at him and puffing on a cigarette.

There are bruises on her face. Chips missing from her teeth and a scar on her lower lip. She inhales and the tip of her cigarette glows like fire—like hellfire—and she exhales, white smoke escaping her nose in a never ending torrent. WhiteWHITEWHITE that fills up the air in front of him, takes SHAPE and FORM and LOOKS AT HIM through eyes like suns.

The girl speaks with this—this THING coming out of her; ‘Oh, Father!’ and her voice is low is propelled forth from her like a missile and something in Dean’s head EXPLODES. There is RAGE and tearing hands and FEAR and it’s tearing him apart!

There is a rabid animal in his head and Dean launches himself at it because no-NONONO! YOU CAN’T HAVE IT!

It BURNS and TEARS but Dean—Dean cries out—SCREAMS and fights. **_NO! NO YOU CAN’T HAVE IT! YOU CAN’T HAVE IT! HE’S MINE YOU CAN’T HAVE HIM!_**

And the foreign presence in his head pushes back against him—KICKS at him and FLEES.

Dean opens his eyes and he’s lying on his back staring at the ceiling, the light fixture is swinging and there is the distinct smell of ozone in the air.

The Other is standing against the far wall panting with wide angry eyes and there is someone else in the room. Someone with wide familiar eyes set above a scruffy face.

He glows like the midnight sky, alive and full of stars one minute—an image transposed over the truth and the next there is just a man standing there the color of storm clouds with an imprint of teeth in his lower lip and a hickey on the side of his neck. He has one hand on The Other Dean’s chest, and the other twisted—tangled with The Other’s scarred fingers.

Castiel stares at Dean with something akin to confusion on his face for all of five seconds, then the light in his eyes shuts down and he turns to The Other Dean, butts his brow against his breastbone and whispers softly; “It’s OK. I’m here.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	35. Roman Wilderness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 36 probably friday or saturday.

0-0-0

Maybe The Other was right about the whole constant diet of apocalypse making you more tolerant to crazy bullshit because Dean wasn’t taking this new revelation easily. He’s reached the point, in his head, where he’s just staring agog. It’s happened before, little surprises or life altering shocks. Sixteen and waking up with eleven-year-old Sam having his first wet dream, quite loudly, in the other bed. Or walking into a gas station while some redneck’s trying to rob it. Being flirted at by a man—Sometimes Dean’s brain just doesn’t know how to deal with these things, so he just stares and fumbles and tries to speak but fails. All his charisma just goes right out the window.

Seeing an older version of himself standing there with a version of Castiel holding his hand gets him to that point. The words knock him over.

And when Castiel pushes his chin up for a kiss? Well, that—that’s just the icing on the cake and Dean forgets for a minute that he’s supposed to be freaked out because—

Because it’s not like the pictures he remembers from the Djinn world.

Not at all.

The Other pulls back and brushes Cas off, mumbles quickly that he has somewhere to be, that the supplies aren’t going to restock themselves. He jabs a finger in Dean’s direction and something cold—almost disgusted—crawls like cockroaches over his face; “Watch HIM. Don’t let him out of your sight… He’s not to leave this cabin, understand? Last thing I need is someone wasting the silver bullets thinking we’ve got a shifter on our hands,” It’s said like an order and Dean watches as Castiel’s shoulders pull back and up and all the warmth and reassurance in his face is wiped away.

He nods and The Other leaves. His footsteps sound offbeat against the floor and the whole of his right leg seems somehow stiff and unyielding. The movement of his ankle is unnatural. If Dean wants to be honest with himself, there doesn’t seem to BE any movement. More a twist of his foot when he walks instead of a bend.

Castiel stands there silently until the door slaps shut and a few minutes later engines start outside. Dean doesn’t like the sound of them. They’re too rough—coughing. Sparkplugs need replacing, transmission is going out, someone’s exhaust is shot all to hell and from the smell of it burning oil.

Why would he let any car get into such a state of disrepair? Why would he let his BABY get into such a pitiful state? He tosses his head against the mattress and breathes in, tries to find a sense of calm.

Something isn’t right here. He doesn’t know what it is, but he can feel it. It’s like a bone deep chill he can’t seem to shake off.

Cas is staring at him. His eyes are glassy, not quite blue enough. Dull. Everything here is so DULL, tinged with the black of demons. But what scares him the most is Cas’ color. Where before he had looked like someone had painted a nebula of blue and indigo flecked with starlight, now he was gray. Like a dirty film. And the shape of him. The shape of him was all wrong. This Castiel wasn’t praying. He was slumped, hands empty and purposeless. There were empty shapes like hands all over him, burned out of him. Scars and wounds and Dean wondered if maybe he wasn’t just one big scar. Wondered if someone hadn’t set him on fire and burned away all his feathery edges.

“Cas.”

He flinched.

“Cas, what the hell is going on here?”

Cas just stared, head cocked to the side, eyes distant. The very corner of his mouth was tilted up. His fingers twitched and he scratched savagely at his thigh through the loose fabric of his pants.

It was then that Dean noticed the black lines on his knuckles and peeking from under the open flaps of his shirt. Pale scar tissue in his pale dirty skin, lines of ink twisting across his chest and ribs.

Cas must have noticed because he lifted his hand and displayed the back of it. It resembled some of the symbols Castiel had drawn to ward off angels, but then again not. Four symbols and a series of lines toward his fingertips. He turned his palm over and there was a dark scar on his palm, a circle with crude letter forms; “Fairy magic,” He wiggled his fingertips like he was waving and gave a little drunken sounding giggle. His lips pulled back too far over his teeth, showed just a little too much gum. “You should see my feet.”

Dean blinked, felt his brows draw down disapprovingly; “Are you stoned?”

“Generally, yeah,” He smiles like he’s almost proud of himself. Almost.

“What’s going on here?” He jerks his chin toward the door; “What’s up with him—me?”

Cas glanced toward the door and back; “What isn’t up with you.”

Dean swallowed nervously; “So, you and me—we’re…” He tilts his chin down emphatically.

Cas looked at him for a few seconds, unblinkingly; “Fucking?”

He flinched.

“Occasionally… Though with no consistency,” He meets Dean’s eyes when he speaks, has a little grin on his face like he thinks it’s the funniest thing in the world; “Why? Are you interested?”

Dean felt color rise to his cheeks and his tongue twisted, distorting whatever it was he’d decided to say.

Cas laughed again, an empty used kind of chuckle that sparked no light or warmth in Dean’s chest. “It was just a joke. Though I have been told I’m a good lay, so maybe I’m serious,” His eyes drag down the length of Dean’s body, light on his chest, waist and crotch, then slide back up.

Dean feels somewhat slimy, like all the eyes that have ever combed over his body in barrooms and truck stops have culminated into one gaze. Dean feels those eyes looking deeper than flesh and finding the marks all over his soul where Alistair had shredded him over and over and over.

Cas’s head tilted again, in the opposite direction and he shifted forward a little, shoulder forward to offer the smallest target he could. Dean focused took in the cold outline of him, all scar tissue grey and empty bits shaped like hands.

“What happened to you, Cas?”

The smile doesn’t leave his face, but it’s not there when he speaks; “Life.”

“If you’re so miserable why don’t you just—“

His gaze becomes steely and his words are sharp and jagged, punch toward Dean like daggers. “Just what? Fly away home? Do you think I haven’t tried that? There’s no HOME left, Dean. The Angels left me here for a reason… I chose you over them. I chose to trust YOU because you said it would help... But I was wrong, it didn’t fix anything.”

“Cas—I can do this. There has to be a way to fix this without letting Michael—“

And Castiel laughed. He laughed so hard he had to lean his hips against the table at the back of the room to stay on his feet.

Dean felt somewhat insulted but sat his jaw and kept going. “Where’s Sam, maybe he can help. There has to be something. If I can find out what went wrong maybe I can stop this from happening!”

Castiel pulled an arm around his waist, tears streaming down his face in his mirth eyes aglitter; “Sam? You think Sam can help you?” A snort, “Sam’s gone, Dean. He’s been gone for five years.”

“What?”

“We weren’t there, but Ellen, Jo and Bobby were… Detroit was leveled, the only reason Bobby and Jo weren’t killed outright was because of Samandriel,” He looks down, rubs his hands together; “After the demons were done with them they were returned… Jo wasn’t the same. They never talked about it but sometimes she would scream in her sleep. She went out on a run with Riley and Martinez about a year and a half ago. None of them came back. Bobby never showed up here after the move and things just kind of went downhill from there.”

“Who’s Samandriel?”

Cas motions to the rope.

Dean glances at it and away again, feels sick to his stomach. The wings burned out on Bobby’s floor. Fucking hell. “What happened to him?”

“Demons.”

“Demons can kill angels?”

“If they have the right weapons—which thanks to Sam, they did.”

It’s like a bullet to the brain. Dean’s mind short circuits and he thrashes. “Sam wouldn’t—NO. He wouldn’t have—“

“He didn’t really have much of a choice. Everyone has a breaking point. You know that for a fact.”

Dean’s brain fills with flashing images. Too quick, like fire glinting off a blade. Sam’s screams alongside his own. Images of Bobby and Jo and Ellen all strapped down like he was—ripped apart from the inside.

He feels like he might black out, is momentarily crushed by it all, but one thing breaks through, one thing tears him out of that pit; “Why weren’t we there? Why wasn’t I there!”

Cas has his arms crossed, has pulled out a chair and dropped into it, hips cocked to one side, eyes distant; “Because they knew your weakness was Sam and you were his. They’re demons, Dean. They don’t stop. They will never stop… They have a lot in common with Winchesters in that respect,” He breathes deeply, shifts his feet and looks up again; “We weren’t there because at the time, we thought we were doing the right thing. You thought staying apart would keep you both safe.”

“But it didn’t—“

“It didn’t.”

Dean nodded, tightened his jaw and promised himself that he would remember. That he would call Sam as soon as he got back and tell him—Would FIX THIS.

It happens quite by accident, Cas is just sitting there scratching at a dubious looking stain on his pants leg and Dean’s grace just kind of reaches out automatically. He’s been doing it for almost three weeks now back in his own time. It’s comfortable, an anchor when he feels unhinged from reality.

He isn’t expecting what happens though. Isn’t expecting for there to be such a sickening wave of unease and NEED when he makes contact. Dean isn’t expecting Cas to visibly flinch and try to draw away like he’s been burned.

There is a brief moment—a flash—where Dean catches Cas’ thoughts. Fearuncertaintywant—NEED—nostalgiadesire—

Dean sees an image of himself standing naked in the dark beside a hotel window, staring out at the glow of fire in the distance and taking long slow drinks directly from a bottle of scotch. The news is playing in the background, frantic screams and explosions, talk about an unknown contaminate in a batch of influenza vaccines. Shrieking children and a helicopter view of some hospital balcony where seven men were tearing a teenaged girl limb from limb while she screamed for help.

Religious cults springing up left and right committing mass suicide. Black eyed people grinning with the veins of their family members in their broken teeth—

Dean is seeing through Cas’ eyes, feels himself as a cosmic immensity shoved into an ill-fitting fleshy suit. Cas is naked and sitting on a rumpled bed, knows there is something he should be doing but he doesn’t understand. He just—just can’t understand. It was supposed to help. Why didn’t it help?

And there is a moment of realization, of epiphany as he stares down at his hands and the wet patches on the sheets. He isn’t enough. He isn’t who Dean wants and he never will be.

Cas is smiling when Dean pulls back in shock of what he’s found. His lips are pulled back gently, kindly, and he just smiles without any kind of feeling and watches Dean try to pull himself together.

Dean feels the despair as if it were his own, can’t look at Cas sitting there like a china doll, without feeling used, so he turns his head away and finds a termite hole in the wall of the cabin. Latches onto it and tries to pull himself in, wench in all his edges and regroup because this he can’t deal with all of this right now. Knowing that his brother and friends are dead, that this world is in ruins because he hadn’t said yes and stopped the devil—

But at the same time he can’t accept it. Won’t. There has to be another way. He just has to get back to his own time and find God. Cas Says God will fix it and Angels don’t lie… unless they do but—

Just no.

It’s not faith, he doesn’t believe that Castiel is right, but—but he hopes. He hopes because he CAN’T let himself be used and burned up by Michael. He can’t let himself be put in that situation again. Dean doesn’t have faith , can’t. He’s been proven wrong too often, let down too frequently. Everyone he’s ever had faith in has proven themselves unworthy, even himself. But then there’s Castiel… and he wants to. He wants to so badly. Feels like maybe he could because if Sam can’t and if an angel of the lord can’t help him then maybe he really isn’t worth it—and he wants to be worth it. He wants to mean something more than this.

Senseless violence for its own sake is one thing, but after what he’s seen. After—AFTER, he can’t deny how blind he’d been.

Dean wants this to be over. He wants the nightmares to go away and the monsters of the world to disappear. He wants life to be simple again like it had been when he was young, safe and sound in his mother’s arms. But it’s not. It’s not and he can never unknow that. But maybe, maybe he can stop it from happening to someone else. And allowing himself to be taken over and used by an Archangel can’t be the answer. He can’t sit back and knowingly let some cold, otherworldly power use his body to torch half the planet.

Cas’ chair screeches against the floor and Dean’s head snaps in his direction, eyes wide and heart jumping like a rabbit in his chest. Castiel pushes back the curtains and drops his chair beside the window, shoves up the sash and sits heavily. There are bars over the glass. Iron wrapped in silver wire and crusted in salt. Cas sits there for a while with the wind on his face and his eyes closed, fishes in his pocket with one tattooed hand and pulls out what Dean is sure isn’t actually a cigarette despite its shape. The smoke smells bitter, sour. Tints the air a sickly gray color.

Dean watches him for a while, long enough that he’s pretty sure that there has been more than one roach before he says something.

“What happened, Cas? When did—What happened?”

Cas looks at him, long and hard with his glassy eyes, tilts his chin up and blows smoke rings at the ceiling. “You don’t even know how to use the grace, do you.”

“You and me—Past You and me, we haven’t exactly been in an environment conducive to sharing.”

He looks back out the window, takes another hit; “You’re scared.”

“I am not—“

“You’re afraid it makes you not-human,” He coughs a little and exhales twin jets of smoke from his nose; “From my own experience, being human isn’t all that great.”

“You’re human?”

“I haven’t had enough grace to light a match with in four years.”

“I thought I could charge you up if I stayed close—“

“Yeah… If you’re willing,” He sits there for a long while with one elbow propped on the window ledge, toes tapping out a hectic stoner’s rhythm against the floor. “Needless to say you and me—Future You and me, we haven’t exactly been in an environment conducive to sharing.”

Dean swallows a lump in his neck; “He won’t—“

“It’s like sex, Dean,” He says it with an air of flippancy, kind of like he thinks it’s a tired conversation; “The more you tense up the more it hurts.”

Dean’s hands tighten into fists and he can feel his lungs closing off, squeezing the breath from him. He moves his feet uncomfortably against the sheet, can feel the charged length of that bloody rope biting into his ankles.

He pinched the fire from the joint and flicked it out the window into a puddle, held his breath for a few seconds too long and exhaled, smoke wreathed around his face and the firefly flicker of his too blue eyes within it.

Dean knew this. KNEW IT. Had seen it before, felt it in his bones. His heart skipped a beat and he pulled on his binds again; “Cas… Cas let me out of these,” I can’t deal with this. I’ve got dead angel rubbing my wrists raw and I can’t take it.

But Cas just stares at him. Blinks slowly and tilts his head to the side— He moved sinuous and slow, like he didn’t exactly have to obey the laws of physics. Dean had seen video of belly dancers that moved like this, like their feet never touched the floor.

Dean could feel him. Was aware of the OTHERNESS hiding just below his stolen skin. It made every nerve sing and every alarm that had kept him going in this life sound off like a fireman’s parade. WRONGWRONGWRONG! Everything about this was just so—so WRONG!

Cas stood over him fingers flexing, a look of contemplation etched into the creases on his face. This close Dean could see little flecks of scar tissue on his arms and fingers. A split in his lip and another at his hairline. He could see how thin Cas had become under his clothing, wasting away—could see dark lines through the threadbare fabric of his shirt, more tattoos, some clean, some sloppy, like he’d done them himself with the ink from a copy machine and an old hypo.

“You’re so small,” Cas leans forward, braces his hands on either side of the pillow. “Such a little thing,” He smiles again, hums pleased with himself and leans a little closer.

Dean can smell the pot on his breath, the liquor, can feel this throbbing hungry VOID where Castiel’s core had always been. Something is different about it, something is cracked.

“Give me one good reason why I should untie you.”

It’s like it’s a game. Some demented cat and mouse. Dean swallows, his mouth and throat are too dry but he does it anyway; “I can help. I can keep this from happening.”

“Oh, you can, can you.”

“We’re looking for God and—“

Cas hums and his fingers dip into the collar of Dean’s shirt, his skin feels clammy, chilled but hot all at the same time, “You mean with this?” He dangles the amulet above Dean’s face by two fingers, like he’s sharing a cigarette.

Something twists and Dean wants to yank it back, wants to keep Cas from touching it.

Cas hums, looks at it, “Try it now… Go ahead. See what you can feel now,” He bumps the cold metal against Dean’s lips makes a cooing noise; “Open up! Come on! Now, don’t make me pull your hair, I know how much you hate that—“

He tilts his head away, tries to fight it but Cas insists, ends up holding it against his mouth with the sweaty palm of his hand.

Dean looks, he’s addicted to Looking—But there is nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

It’s not the same nothing as when the thing the Compass is pointing to moves out of his range. That’s always like the dark of the night, hollow and echoing with so much room. This—There is literally nothing to look at. It’s like staring at a piece of paper at the end of a book waiting for more words to appear. There is just. NOTHING.

Cas lifts his hand away and turns his back. Sits on the edge of the bed at Dean’s hip and scrapes dirt from under his nails. “I’m not an angel anymore, but I still felt it. The whole world felt it I’m sure.”

“So, God’s in heaven?”

“No,” He said it like he was saying he didn’t want ketchup on his hotdog. Like it was no big deal. “God’s gone. Dead, I don’t know. But he’s not here anymore. Hasn’t been since Detroit. Maybe he never was to begin with.”

“Don’t say that—“

Cas’ head tilted up; “Oh, that’s right… I’m not allowed to doubt, I’m an angel, aren’t I, Dean? I don’t feel indecision or regret or sadness because I’m not human. I’m just one of God’s little tin soldiers, not a person.”

“Cas—“

He turned, stared down at Dean through eyes that held no spark; “Shut up. Just… shut up.”

0-0-0

Time passes. It’s inevitable that it does. Kind of like bruising after a punch to the eye.

Dean watches Castiel move around the cabin. He heats up a can of pork and beans and sits by his window to eat it. Rolls his eyes and offers to make airplane noises, wiggling to spoon toward Dean’s mouth.

It’s embarrassing. HUMILIATING, but the little guy won’t untie him even to let him eat on his own. Not that he has much of an appetite. But then he remembers the sight of himself in that hotel mirror. How much effort it had taken to get away from those infected whackos because his muscles are wasted.

Cas seems to find some kind of peace with this. Spooning beans into him. Some kind of satisfaction maybe because he relaxes visibly and what little grace he has left doesn’t flinch or shrink away when Dean’s reaches out to it instinctually.

Dean just tries to separate himself from everything that’s happening because goddammitall but this is probably the most humiliating experience of his life, and that’s saying something because he’s experienced some doozies.

Dean draws the line though when he discovers he has to use the toilet a few hours later. He’d rather piss on himself.

Cas ignores him for a while, smokes another joint and meditates. Actually fucking meditates with his legs crossed and his fingers pinched together and everything.

Dean gives in after about two hours of it, his bladder is so full it hurts and Cas takes sympathy on him, releases his legs but doesn’t untie his hands. However the rope is just long enough that he can get his pants open without issue. He just hasn’t had to piss in a bucket since he and Dad had been snowed in during a blizzard in Vermont the year after Sam left.

“Can you not HOVER like that? I’ve got public piss syndrome—“

Cas snorts and turns his back, but that doesn’t make it any easier. “You act like I’ve never seen you naked before.”

He says it like its fact and Dean knows that Cas is out of it enough not to be able to tell the difference between The Other and Dean because his shoulders hunch up and he glances back like a kicked dog.

Dean gets to sit on the bed for an hour or so, stretches the muscles in the back of his neck and pretends Cas isn’t there. It’s harder than it sounds considering the guy’s pretending he’s not there either. He’s sitting by the window with the breeze on his face and his eyes closed.

Dean asks when he can’t stand the silence anymore. He’s been trapped in this godforsaken room tied to this disgusting, saggy, stained bed for longer than he hasn’t been and he just can’t take the quiet anymore. “So, Sputnik’s gone too?”

Cas gives a tilt of his head in agreement, doesn’t elaborate. Maybe that’s for the best.

Dean fights with the rope around his wrists for a little while, but whatever spell had been cast on them, whatever ritual had been used, the more Dean fought with them, the higher his grace built in agitation, the tighter the rope seemed to get. He curses loudly in his head at Zechariah. Demands to be returned to his own time, but the smarmy asshole ignores him.

Instead he begins to feel a familiar pull on his grace. Finds himself passing questioning glances toward Cas, confused, worried.

And Cas just sits there meditating again, looking innocent with the tattoos on his hands and chest, while he latches on when Dean reaches out. Clings.

It’s strangely comforting. What little is left of this Cas’ grace feels almost the same as Castiel’s. Is the same technically, just older, wounded.

Dean finds himself lulled by it, soothed—He’s exhausted, that’s the only excuse he can come up with. He’s emotionally and physically drained so he can’t be held responsible for falling asleep. Can’t be blamed for his eyes falling shut and the lumpy mattress folding itself around him. He can’t be held responsible for it. It’s familiar and calming and—

The dreams on the other hand, are different. This Cas doesn’t pull him gently from the memories when Dean finds them. This Cas lets him in like he’s used to it, like he’s afraid to deny him.

Dean sees that same beach, the ocean BLAZING with LIFE and GRACE, the sand still settling and new, the land around him breathtaking, wild and unsullied.

Dean sees the sky at sunset fading into night, sees stars and galaxies wheeling overhead—sees a great burning star falling from the heavens, tumbling and then the sky is bright—all the stars are blasted back and the sound of the sea stills.

It’s like watching a nuclear explosion—everything is UNMADE in a single instant and the sea opens up and swallows the meteors as they rain down. Like a hungry monstrous mouth. The world is scorched black and the color of it burned down to near nonexistence, to what Dean had always considered normal.

And all the while Dean stands on the shore and watches until the night is dark again and the sky is practically empty compared to its former glory.

Dean stands there on the shore and mourns its loss. Feels the absence of it deep in his core, from the soles of his feet to the ends of all thirty fingers and the brushing width of his wings—

Something breaks, jolts him out of his dreams.

It’s dark outside the window and Dean’s arms are numb from being stretched above his head. He has to pee again.

There is a repetitive noise at his back. Something scratching at the floor, the jingle of metal—a sound like flesh striking—

Cas moans and The Other moans with him.

He looks.

It’s a real problem.

He glances over his shoulder as if he doesn’t already know what’s happening, like some stupid kid watching snot dangle from their nose.

Cas is on his back on the tabletop, legs hooked over The Other’s shoulders, pants in a rumpled heap in the floor. His right hand is clamped on the edge of the table at his hip, nails digging into the wood, the left is tangled in The Other’s hair, pulling. Head tilted back, bruised mouth open wide and gasping for air, eyes squeezed shut.

Dean sees himself bent forward one hand on Cas’ hip the other on the far edge of the table above their heads, pulling for leverage, his jeans and belt are pooled at his feet—No. No, there’s only one foot, the right one is gone just below the knee, nothing but metal and plastic halfway down. There are symbols and sigils drawn all over the plastic and Dean can’t help but stare at it, it seems alien, impossible. But his gaze doesn’t linger because this scarred version of himself is fucking Cas.

Yes, there is a difference. He wishes he didn’t know it, but there is a difference. Sex has feeling… This-this does not. It’s just urgency and barely controlled rage and desperation—

Dean feels sick, turns his head away and grinds his teeth, tries not to see afterimages playing about on the insides of his lids. He wants to scream, wants to tear at his skin with his nails but all he can do is feign sleep and hope The Other is so focused on what he’s doing to Cas that he doesn’t notice there is an audience—

Maybe he knows already. Maybe this is some kind of dominance display. Maybe The Other knows he’s awake and is doing this on purpose.

Cas breathes quickly, says ‘Dean—Dean!’ and The Other growls out to be quiet, shifts his feet farther apart and keeps going.

Happy place. Find a Happy Place—

There is no distraction from it. It’s real in a way this place hasn’t felt as of yet.

Dean, he says—Dean! The other’s breath hitches and the table makes a screeching noise against the floor. Cas breathes in deeply and whispers that it’s OK. It’s OK.

Dean doesn’t think it is. Wishes he were dead.

The other’s footsteps are uneven, drunken. His belt-buckle makes a jingling noise and he leaves without so much as a word.

There is quiet.

Too much quiet.

The air is thick with the scent of sex and sweat and the bitter stench of too much marijuana. Dean feels clammy and disgusting, is shivering and doesn’t know why.

It happens slowly. Bare feet against floorboards. A snuff through wet nostrils.

Dean feels every little hair on his body stand on end and he clamps down on the shock and revulsion and disgust and shoves it deep, tries to hide the fact that he’s witnessed this—this display.

Cas pulls the curtains closed, shuts the door and leans his shoulder against it, doesn’t make a sound for a long while.

“Shut up.”

Dean hasn’t said anything. Hasn’t even thought anything.

Cas breathes in and out, pushes away from the door and pads over, jolts the mattress with his knee and towers there pressing out with his grace like a molting bird shivering in the wind. All imposing ruin and decayed greatness, diminished and soiled and refusing to give up.

Dean’s vision is blurry and his temples itch from the moisture of sweat and saltwater.

Cas stares at him, eyes dilated and bloodshot, lips kiss bruised and cheeks flushed. He looks so utterly human and debauched and broken down Dean wants to wrap him up in his arms and not let him go.

I can’t let this happen. I can’t let this happen to him—

Cas looks at him, pushes IN and Dean can’t fight back against it.

He moves slow, Dean thinks this Cas lives in slow motion, dull eyes never blinking, like a scared animal ready to bolt but too hungry not to take what was being offered. Just as likely to bite off your fingers.

Dean shook, could feel himself reaching out for Castiel but there didn’t seem to be anything to reach back at him. Just a sad wet flicker like a cigarette in a storm drain.

Castiel crawled over the stained sheets and formed himself to Dean’s side, tucked his head against his shoulder and sighed deeply, exhaustedly. The hand that had been gripping the edge of the table sliding a little too heavily across Dean’s chest to press against his sternum, that soggy ember inside him shifting and reaching out possessively to the grace in Dean’s chest. He breathed in and it rattled in his lungs; “I could take this back.”

Dean’s body locked up and his eyes picked a cobweb in the ceiling joists and honed in, giving his mind something else to focus on, something distant and unaffected. He had a crack in the wall back in hell that he’d tried to lose himself in occasionally. It never worked, but he’d still tried. Not trying was worse than finding your efforts were in vain.

This was going to hurt. He knew it. It was going to hurt so much but he couldn’t stop it couldn’t pull his hands free and fight back—it was Cas. He couldn’t—not after what he’d seen.

“I could take this back and you wouldn’t try to stop me… He would, but You… You won’t,” His voice seems somehow joyful even in its despair, in its heartbreak. “If I had it back I could leave, I wouldn’t have to see—“ His voice chokes off to a whisper and his too glassy eyes lift, “And you’d let me take it. You’d lie there and l-let me, just like you did before.”

But instead of taking Castiel presses IN and images splash across the forefront of Dean’s mind again, prodded and SEEN. Images and sensations still so fresh and tender. Sitting across from one another, knees touching—

_He’s going to kiss me._

But it goes on—it just keeps GOING!

Castiel kisses him and Dean lets him—He LETS HIM and the fear—

It’s all sensation and sound and too much, too similar, too MUCH!

He jerked his head away and felt the contact retreat with a snap like an elastic band. Dean came back to himself breathing heavily, Castiel’s hand lifted away, hovered an inch or so above his heart. The look in his eyes was curious, perhaps even a little hopeful.

“When he comes for you…” His hand lowered again, shaking, drawing something swirling and complex on the right side of his chest with the tip of one finger. There is a smile on his face, something soft and serene and almost defiant in its desolation, like the cloudlessness of the sky after a tornado’s blown through and destroyed your home. Something mocking in the joy painted against ruin. Like flowers at funerals.

“I want to give you something… Maybe—maybe it’ll make a difference. Maybe it won’t… but I want you to have it.”

Dean swallows convulsively, can feel his whole body shuddering, can feel the waning scrap of Castiel’s grace feeding off his own even as he pushes it into whatever he’s doing, faster and faster until with a little pop—like the spark of static electricity between your finger and the doorknob, it’s gone and Castiel is breathing unsteadily eyes alight even as the bluelikestarlight has been snuffed out, gone gray like a cold morning as he hovers over Dean, smiling so sad and kind and… and somehow found even as he is lost. He doesn’t say anything, strokes a shivering bruised hand over Dean’s hair and leans down, presses his dry lips to Dean’s brow as his nimble fingers work at the knots binding Dean’s wrists. The rope falls away and Castiel pauses, looks at him like he’s not sure he’s done the right thing and tilts his head to the side. Cups a hand to his cheek and smiles. “I like past you…” A soft rumbling sound in his chest, “Don’t ever change—“ His lip quivers and with a wet sounding breath he rolls onto his side, curls in on himself in the far corner of the bed and doesn’t move.

Dean breathes for a long while, gets the rapid pounding of his heart under control once more. He can barely feel the tingle of what Castiel has drawn on his chest. It’s so faint he suspects the spider bite on his ass irritates him more. He pulls his arms down from above his head, crosses them tightly over his chest and looks toward the former angel. This husk that Castiel has become.

He can see the notches of his spine through his shirt, the curl in his hair where it’s stuck to his neck by sweat and grime. He seems dimmed, colorless… dead.

Dean breathes in and out, lifts up onto his elbows and stares down at him. Wonders if maybe, from his stillness, if he hasn’t actually died. Overdosed or given Dean what was left of himself and just—just gone out like a match flame.

Why? What changed. What happened? What did The Other say or Do while he was gone that made Cas suddenly—

“We’re leaving at Midnight… I’ve been told you’re to come with us.”

Dean swallows, rubs a fist under his nose, looks around trying to gauge the time, and can’t; “Where?”

“The end of all things.”

Dean tries to swallow but his throat feels suddenly parched.

“He’s going to kill the devil tonight.”

“You found a way?”

Cas says nothing.

Dean reaches forward, wants to find out what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling—but there’s nothing. Just silence and the grayness of everything around him. Cas has no color, not an absence like Dean and The Other, but just a gray haze like the earth and trees. There is nothing left but the life in his stolen bones.

Dean’s chest aches, the tingle of the power sketched on his skin fades. The world continues to turn.

Out in the camp somewhere a door slams and the world is quiet.

Dean breathes deep, plants his heels on the sagging mattress and shifts his hips over, follows it cautiously with the rest of his body and forms himself to Cas’ back. Hesitates and wraps his arms around thin shoulders, feels the bite of bone barely concealed beneath skin and hides his face in the nape of his neck. Breathes in the stale scent of him. Sweat, wood ashes and the bitter tang of pot smoke, rough sex and bathtub gin.

Cas shudders and goes lax.

For a long time they are quiet, so long in fact that Dean wonders if the Castiel he left in Oakland would understand this or if it would fly over his head like so much else has. It’s frustrating to think that His Castiel, Castiel the Angel and this shattered husk are so very different when they FEEL the same.

The weight of them, not a physical thing, but the weight that Dean feels pressing in against his grace. Even without what was left of this Cas’ feeding off it, if Dean focuses with all his strength, he still feels him. Feels the shadowed MUCHNESS of him, broken and exhausted but no less mighty for his fall. Dean remembers lying there with His Cas, watching him sleep and feeling that same weight in his chest, that EMENSITY hidden beneath human skin.

“Are you Him?” Dean can’t force much sound out with the words, just a hiss of breath shaped like them; “Cas, are—are you Him?”

“Him’ who?”

He swallows, tries to stretch out the tightness building in his neck. He can’t say it. Can’t even think it and force it forward like he’s done before because this Cas can’t hear it anymore. It clogs up his throat and sinuses with moisture so he swallows it back and focuses on familiar words, a song. Breathes them into the sticky nape of Cas’ neck. Hopes—PRAYS for some kind of reaction—

And gets none.

His voice freezes in his throat and he clenches his jaws, biting the words off. Feels futile and stupid and Jesus he’s an idiot. It was a dream. A DREAM because a fucking Djinn poisoned him. It’s no more significant than the nightmares and hallucinations he has when he’s given morphine

Dean doesn’t say anything else. Doesn’t know what he can say, just lies there for a long while breathing and feeling the weak flutter of Cas’ heart against his wrist, gentle brushes of fingertips up and down his arm. Cas doesn’t hum, or grind his teeth, he just kind of lays there like he’s waiting for something to happen. Like he’s in some high school play and someone forgot to give him a cue. He’s just playing a part here and it—it kind of hurts because Cas is only that here. He’s not a person, he’s not an angel. He’s some two dimensional reflection. A ghost and Dean knows it’s his fault—Can’t get the image of the older version of himself pinning Castiel down and—

Dean wills himself to remember what symbols had been traced into his skin. Tries to force the vision of himself and Cas out of his head because it feels so WRONG. Inches forward with his grace and tries to prod into Cas’ memories, tries to find when things had gone south. When his decision to say ‘No’ had cost them the world.

But Cas’ mind is velvet blackness right now, purposefully empty. Defiant. Like he’s used to this. Like The Other has done it before. Searched his mind by force.

What if he has? What if The Other has hurt Cas? To what lengths would he go to get answers?

Dean holds him closer, like an apology and Castiel breathes out like he’s heard it all before and there’s nothing left for him to do but accept and carry on. Enjoy it while it’s there and be prepared, expecting of the fallout.

Neither of them speak, not for a long time, until there is noise in the camp. Doors opening and closing. People talking softly. A flashlight beam catches through the window casting the shadow of prison bars across tattered wallpaper of yellowed headlines and obituaries, passages on gas shortages and bad batches of vaccines taking out two thirds of the population in less than twenty-four hours. Dean reads them as best he can from this distance. Tries to memorize them, tells himself that if he can find it before it happens he can stop it. He can stop this.

“You should go…” Castiel’s lips move against his inner arm, shift and press like a kiss. “Before he comes back.”

Dean grinds his teeth, pretends, puts on a brave face because that’s all he knows to do. “What? Not confident I can kick my own ass?”

Castiel grins but there is no humor in it. “He might be down a leg, Dean, but he’s not stupid. He knows how you fight… He IS you. Older and wiser and not likely to pull his punches just to spare your pretty face. He has nothing to lose and you’d do well to remember that.”

He breathes in and out, feels something in his chest tighten and that yawning void of memories swell up again, so CLOSE he can taste it but not quite near enough to grasp.

Castiel sits up, stiff and trembling slightly as he reaches for his pill bottles. “Go.”

There is no question or room for argument in it, so Dean sits up. He turns, sits on the opposite side of the bed for a few minutes just staring at the table in the other room with a sick feeling in his gut. His lungs feel squeezed off, compressed, but he forces himself to speak anyway; “Why do you let me do that to you? What did he—What did I do? How do I stop this from happening?”

Castiel breathes in and out, stands and stretches—pops his back like a xylophone and grunts out in relief as he limps toward the window. “You can’t stop it. There is an inevitability in time… it wears away at you. Erodes everyone, everything. Pretty soon there’s nothing left but a raw nerve. You hit that one too many times and…” He tosses back a rainbow assortment of pills and washes them down with a swig of scotch. “You’re YOU, Dean. There’s no changing that. Your hatred for yourself is rivaled only by your hatred of _him_ —“ He snorts, “Which I suppose, is just another way of saying you hate yourself,” It’s a wry kind of laugh, sharp and cold and ugly. He turns and looks Dean up and down, tilts his head in sympathy, like maybe Dean’s just some kid who has made a mess of things in an attempt to be helpful. “You can’t stop this from happening because you can’t stop yourself from making the same fucking choices. It’s a cycle,” His eyes flick to Dean’s wrists, the scratches and bruises and slowly healing knife wounds. “ A vicious spiral. You don’t know how to stop… Your gift and your curse, isn’t that what they say?” He meets Dean’s eyes and takes another long drink. Breathes in and turns away before his composure crumbles.

When Castiel tells him to ‘go’ again, Dean listens. He wants to stay, wants to figure this out… But he _can’t._ Can’t stand to see the mess he’s made. The ruin he’s caused _._ So he doesn’t try, he just turns and leaves.

0-0-0

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	36. So Long, and Good Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be editing this chapter slightly tomorrow, I'm just out of time atm.

0-0-0

It’s quiet outside, eerie. The sun is just going down and Dean, from his own experience, knows there should have been bugs in the air. There should have been animals or birds making noise, but there is nothing. Everything is quiet but for the muted sounds of life from the cabins in the clearing.

Chitaqua takes up a hillside and part of a valley. There are signs, rotting and faded with time, that indicate there is a lake to the north. Dean suspects that’s where these people bathe from the oh-so-fresh smell.

Dean stops not far from the cabin and stares at the overgrown ruin of the Impala. Feels his chest tightening up and his breath shortening. It’s like a magnetic force, like fucking gravity—he finds himself standing there where the driver’s door should have been, crouched with a hand over his mouth staring in at the mess. Part of the rear seat is still there, singed and melted and dry-rotted. All cracked and brittle and covered in dirt. There is a sprig of dry dead grass amid the mulch of decaying acorn shells and leaf litter. Like it’s grown there, the earth slowly beginning to swallow his baby down.

The front bench and dash are nothing but a charred melted mess. The springs and framing rusted and sagging from the heat of the flames. The floorboard is pitted and rusted through in a few places, the heat of the flames probably ate the metal away, made it brittle and nature did the rest.

She’s on blocks. Rear axle broken and lying parallel to the bumper, which is sagging, broken off the frame on one side, crimped like someone had just folded it up.

The hood is gone, driver’s side fender is trashed, crumpled in like so much waste paper and when he puts his head toward the ground and peers beneath the frame is cracked nearly in two.

He thumps his head against the earth and feels the near overwhelming urge to cry.

Feet on dry grass, “Dean, look—sorry to bother you again, but we kind of need to talk about—“

He lurches upright, eyes wide and stares.

Chuck looks up from his clipboard and stands there with his mouth open for a second, blinks—shakes his head to clear it and his brows pull down; “Hey, you—You’re-you’re not Dean—“ He turns, tries to bolt, but Dean is faster, grabs him around the shoulders, claps a hand over his mouth and yanks him back, hisses into his ear and tries to dodge the stomp to his instep, dances back until he gets it all said.

“It’s me! I swear, it’s me! Just not—not NOW me. Zechariah dropped me here from two-thousand-nine!”

Chuck’s eyes are wide and his fuzzy face feels disgusting against Dean’s palm but—but then he sees it.

Chuck’s color is… Chuck has Color. It’s the first time Dean’s ever seen it. He’s a dull lavender, but around his head there is a soft, gentle corona of Pale yellow. Dean has never seen someone with that kind of, for lack of a better word, HALO of a second color. There’s a BRIGHTNESS similar to it around Cas’ head, around all angel’s heads he suspects, but he’s never seen a person with one.

Dean just kind of stands there staring for a long time unsure what to think.

“You—uh— You can let go now, Dean.”

It’s muffled into his hand, feels weird, vibrates against his skin. Dean releases him, rubs his palms on the legs of his jeans to rid them of the itching tingling sensation of breath and beard and voice.

Chuck takes a step away rubbing his face, turns and regards Dean critically; “Oh-Nine, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Chuck breathes in and out, jerks his head toward the cabin Dean had spent all day in; “Don’t let the other you see you… He’ll—“

“Yeah, little late for that,” He rubs his chafed wrists compulsively.

“No, I mean, don’t let him see you outside… In fact, it might be best if you just—just left. The people around here aren’t going to react too well to seeing their leader in stereo. We’ve only got about thirty silver bullets left and—“ He pauses, looks Dean up and down again and shakes his head; “Something’s not right with you.”

And Dean feels his stomach try to escape through his nose. He steps forward with his eyes wide, heart beating swiftly; “What are you talking about?”

Chuck rubs at his left temple, face twisting and paling in something like panic, “You… your color’s all wrong—“

A hand tangles in the back of his collar, jerks him back, and another latches on to the seat of his pants, lifts and spins him around.

Dean stumbles to keep up with whoever’s got hold of him, reaches back and claws at the hands gripping his clothes: “HEY!”

And the next second he’s slammed face first into the rough outer wall of the cabin and pinned there by something that feels the size of a freight train, bearing down on him with an energy that feels as if it dwarf his own but resonates in his chest as being the same, or almost the same, like a pair of identical knives, one blunt, one sharpened. Guess which is which.

Dean’s hands go up because he can feel the fury burning into the back of his head, knows that look without even seeing it. He’s made it often enough to know when he’s pissed off. Knows enough about himself to recognize when struggling will just get you hurt.

The Other pushes him harder against the building with the length of his body; “Have a good nap, Sunshine?”

Dean’s lips pull back from his teeth, “I’m not too clear on the whole logistics, but I’m pretty sure this is considered incest in some way—“

He snorts, and for a moment genuine amusement flashes through him, spreading where the duplicate grace merges, then suddenly he isn’t. He spins Dean around and shoves him back with a hand on his throat, eyes locked on Dean’s chest; “What the hell?” and he jerks the collar of Dean’s t-shirt down hard enough that some of the threads pop. His eyes widen; “What the fuck is that?”

Dean glances down, can’t see anything—“What?”

The Other’s face curls up in disgust and anger; “You’re all marked up like a whore that’s what,” He shoves him back against the wall “It worth it? Was he a good lay? Sloppy seconds turn you on or something?”

And Dean, for a moment, doesn’t see himself standing there, doesn’t even hear himself. He sees his father in the lines of his own face, hears his voice in those words. He feels at once humiliated and angry, knocks the Other’s hand away and shoves him back with flat palms pushed up against his chest. “Don’t,” He feels the grace building, sliding into his hands as they tighten into fists.

The Other looks at him, eyes narrowed and Dean can feel the build of power, the tension cresting and knows when a punch is about to be thrown because he’s about two heartbeats away from doing it himself.

“I know that the whole ‘you’re your own worst critic’ thing is an understatement where you’re concerned, Dean. But I’m pretty sure that the rest of the camp would find the sight of you literally fighting with yourself unsettling beyond measure,” Cas came out of the cabin swinging on a jacket.

The Other glares at him, jaw tightening; “What did you do.”

Cas squares his shoulders and cocks his head to the side, chin up defiantly; “I gave the kid something to remember me by. Is that a problem?”

“You stupid sonofabitch. Do you really think Zechariah is gonna let—“

“I think that you’re drawing attention to us, and we’re in the middle of a camp of twitchy trauma survivors with guns and a finite number of silver bullets. What Zechariah will and will not do about it is irrelevant. We’re wasting time.”

The Other stared, fists shaking but he didn’t continue arguing. He lowered his voice and leveled a finger under Dean’s nose, muttered; “This isn’t over,” And stomped away.

Dean stood there for a moment, staring after himself, muttered; ‘Dick’ under his breath and straightened his clothes, rubbed a hand on the side of his face that had impacted the cabin wall and found a sticky little cut along his left cheekbone.

Cas stared at him mutely for a moment, then with a sigh stepped forward and caught his hand, flattened it rather inelegantly over the spot and spoke; “It’s like jello… you stab jello with a spoon it seals up again. Still there, but unless you stab at it some more you can’t tell."

Dean’s eyes narrow; “What?”

Cas rolls his eyes; “Tell it to stop bleeding.”

He scowls, feels his head tilting and stops it, grinds his teeth and pushes in against the cut. Tells it plainly. Stop bleeding.

It doesn’t work.

Cas mumbles about his stubbornness and fumbles in his pockets. His hand comes out with a flask, it’s dented, looks like one of those steel army surplus things kind of like the one Rufus keeps filled with holy water on his hip. Someone’s engraved Cas’ name on it rather sloppily, maybe he did it himself, and Dean watches curiously as Cas spills a little vodka on his thumb and swipes the cut with it. “You’re hopeless,” Then he takes a swig and walks away.

The alcohol stings, burns his eye, but Dean doesn’t say anything, prods around it with his fingertips checking for the beginnings of a bruise and slowly follows.

They met in what was once the mess hall. The room was sectioned off by old hospital division screens. There appeared to be a kind of War Room in one corner, maps tacked up on all the walls with red string connecting pins like spider webs and a makeshift kitchen with a number of butane stoves and an old coal wood thing that looked like something out of _Little House on the Prairie_.

There were already a few people in the room waiting. Two women, a brunette with her hair pulled back and a blonde with her arm in a sling. A handful of men with assault rifles stood nearby, one guarding the back door and the other with one foot propped on an adjacent chair. They all gripped their weapons tighter when Dean came into the room following Cas and his older self.

The Other spoke loudly, “He’s clean… Just more Bullshit,” Then he pointed to the corner, met Dean’s eyes and said; ‘SIT’ like you would to a disobedient dog.

Dean sat simply because there were about six too many people in the room with guns and itchy trigger fingers than he would have liked.

Cas came over a moment later and sat nearby, put himself between Dean and the group then noisily propped his too big boots on the table. This seemed to calm them down a little and the Other got to the point of the meeting. Hefted what Dean was sure was Bobby’s old Alice pack onto the table and withdrew a scrap of flannel wrapped around something—

Dean knew what it was. Oddly enough, he felt it. When the cloth was flipped back the gun sat there, seemed ordinary enough considering the carvings Colt had done on the grips and cylinder. But something else. Something Dean had never noticed before.

The metal itself seemed to SHINE. Just a soft illumination, not quite a glow. It wasn’t surprising, he’d figured the colt would be different in more than its outward appearance. What was surprising though, was that the metal FELT different. Just like the metal of the amulet FELT different now that he knew what to look for.

The Other spoke briefly with the group, explained what it was and how he had found it.

The idea that this version of himself was willfully and happily torturing again made Dean’s stomach crawl up his throat, even more so when Cas’ comment solidified what he had feared. That maybe this Dean had used his ‘talents’ against Cas himself at one point, for whatever purpose.

The plan itself stank. Dean thought, at first, that the Other was joking, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t joking.

He wasn’t joking and the group agreed to go through with it unquestioningly. Wholeheartedly.

They would march in, deal with the ‘Croats’ and The Fearless Leader would take on Lucifer.

They didn’t even ask. Didn’t even flinch.

Dean held his tongue long enough for the last of them to file out and the door to click shut behind them. Cas tried to stop him, said his name but Dean pushed forward and slammed a palm down on the map spread over the tabletop.

“What the FUCK is wrong with you!”

“That’s rich coming from you—“

“You’re gonna send those people to their deaths!”

“Gotta die sometime, at least this way it’ll be quick.”

He gaped, watched as The Other packed the colt away in his bag again; “Do you even hear yourself? This is suicide!”

He looks up and it is perhaps more unnerving that he appears so calm than the fact Dean’s looking into his own eyes; “You got a better plan? Because from where I’m standing, this is our last resort. I tried to find God, all it got me was a bunch of dead friends. I tried spells, other angels, pagan gods, witches, tricksters—Got my foot blown off for the effort— I have tried EVERYTHING ELSE. So, I’m gonna walk up to Satan and I’m gonna give him a Dean Winchester breath mint… And you’re gonna watch. You’re gonna see, and when you get back to oh-nine, you’re gonna look Zechariah right in the face and say ‘yes’… With feeling.”

“There’s got to be another way!”

“There is no other way! Can’t you see that? YOU. ARE. WRONG! There is no other way! There is only ‘Yes’ or THIS!” He waves a hand around indicating the world around him. “You need to grow a pair and take a little responsibility!”

“Responsibility? You want me to let a frickin’ ARCHANGEL destroy half the planet fighting the devil wearing my skin?”

“Half a planet is better than no planet!”

He snorts, shakes his head and rocks back on his heels a little, “Something is broken in you. I would never sacrifice my friends—“

It’s quick. Too quick, Dean didn’t think it was possible for him to move like that considering this version of him is missing half of his leg, but one second The Other is just standing there, the next Dean is on his back on the table and He is bending over him and all Dean can see is those same hands pinning Cas down, folding him up and TAKING—

“You’re not doing anybody any favors! You’re pathetic and scared and you’re going to let the only chance humanity has slip away because you can’t make that sacrifice! You’re selfish—You can’t have your way so you’re going to sit back and watch the world burn… I’ll let you in on a little secret, DEAN. You’re not the hero of this story. You’re not the good guy… Good guys give everything to the cause, they don’t sit back and watch their baby brothers get swallowed up by fucking LUCIFER because they’re too fucking scared! They don’t destroy everything good in the world like I did. Like YOU WILL. Good guys take the bullet—You want to be the hero? Then you say ‘YES’ before Sam does and END THIS!”

Dean can’t breathe, feels choked by the awesome PRESSURE of honed grace against his own, hands holding his wrists to the tabletop and the weight of his own body against itself. “W-what?”

The Other’s lips pull back from his teeth and his eyes are lit from within with rage and despair and hatred; “Oh, you didn’t know? Imagine that…” He SMILES and for an instant he expects the Other to have nine hands and a box full of sharp treasures. “You’re Michael’s vessel, Dean— And Sam is the Devil’s... And because you couldn’t bear to sacrifice yourself, because you couldn’t be assed to say ‘yes’ while it would have made a difference, we have to go down there and kill him, and you—you’re gonna watch. And when you get back, you’re gonna take one for the team like the good little soldier you are.”

There’s a spider in the corner, it’s pale and dried and dead but it’s the first animal Dean’s seen since he arrived. It’s fascinating. Pristine and preserved in a delicate web frosted with dust particles.

It’s almost beautiful.

The Other gives him a hard shove back against the tabletop and Dean almost expects the hands pinning his own to begin tearing at his clothes, instead there are off-beat footsteps and the slam of the door.

“Dean?”

His breath hitches, comes in in fits and starts. Jerking like he can’t quite remember how to do it.

“Dean.”

How he makes it to his feet he doesn’t know. But the next thing he is fully aware of, Cas is pushing a bottle at him, saying it’ll help.

He drinks mechanically. Feels the acid tear of alcohol down his throat. It sets hot and heavy in his stomach, boils and cramps up his insides.

Cas doesn’t talk much. They sit there for a long time, just the muted sound of liquid sloshing or the click of Dean’s throat as he swallows. Dean’s eyes are watering, he tries to tell himself it’s because of the alcohol, that his body isn’t used to it anymore. But he can’t bring himself to lie about it.

Cas drags his chair closer, somehow winds up sitting there between Dean’s knees, looking up at him. He’s humming, sounds like Smashing Pumpkins or something. Dean can’t be assed to think too much about it. The sun sinks behind the hills, and the interior of the mess hall becomes dim and bleached of color.

Someone in a cabin close to them is having loud sex, the woman is grunting and crying out loudly and Cas is smiling, too many teeth and too much moisture in his eyes. He tips his flask up over his mouth and swallows the last few drops, tosses it into the corner and leans forward, sinuous and almost snake like, ducks under Dean’s arm and puts his elbows on Dean’s thighs, is too close and too much and not sober at all.

“Last night on earth, Dean… What do you want to do?” He hums and catches his lower lip between his teeth, walks his fingers like a tin soldier up Dean’s leg toward his belt.

Dean’s gut feels heavy; “I… Just sit here, I guess.”

Cas laughs and for the first time it actually sounds like he thinks it’s funny. “You don’t even want a blow job?”

He shakes his head, can’t look Cas in the eye at the moment.

“No?”

“No.”

The woman across the yard is getting louder now. Gives a shrill scream and continues moaning.

Dean takes another drink and when Cas’s hands walk up his thigh again he pushes them away. After the third time he gets the message and just sits there, legs cocked out and sprawling, watches Dean take small drinks.

Dean doesn’t finish the bottle, can’t stomach much more than a few good drinks before he just winds up sitting there holding it.

Castiel watches him, it’s almost unnerving, but there’s some kind of peace in his expression, some kind of clarity Dean didn’t expect considering how stoned he is. About forty minutes later something shakes loose, maybe Dean’s drunk. If so it should be damn embarrassing considering he’s only had about four shots worth of watery scotch. Dean talks.

His voice is low, even, surprisingly calm considering what he’s saying.

“Sam’s the devil’s vessel?”

Cas nods slowly.

“And he said yes?”

Another nod.

“No… No, the bastard possessed him, Sam wouldn’t—“

“Lucifer is still an angel, Dean. He needs permission, just like I did. Just like Michael does.”

“Sam wouldn’t—“

“Wouldn’t he?” Cas leans forward, meets Dean’s eyes and speaks carefully; “We left him, Dean. You and I just left that morning. We didn’t say goodbye, we didn’t go back. We were going to find God and we didn’t let anything distract us… Then the morning after Oakland you called him, said it was best if you stayed apart , that Zechariah would only use you against one another… So that’s just what we did. We didn’t talk to him or Bobby or Ellen or Jo again. Think of what that did to him. He’s alone and he’s hurt and you’re off chasing God instead of helping him. Everybody has a breaking point, Dean. Everyone. You should know that better than most—“

“So what? I should just go back and say ‘yes’?”

“Yes… But you won’t. I know you won’t, He knows you won’t, you know you won’t… so the point is moot,” He sighs, “What you should do and what you will do are two different things… You’re stubborn to the end. You wouldn’t be Dean Winchester if you weren’t.”

“This is it then? This is how the world ends?”

Cas takes the bottle from him and tips it to his grinning lips; “Funny isn’t it.”

Dean stares at him, feels moderately incensed. He wants to scream and shout and throw things in his impotence. What is the point of all of this if there is nothing he can do to stop it?

There is no point. Nothing makes any difference, nothing matters! It’s all just POINTLESS!

The woman across the yard shrieks again and the man with her cries out as well. Dean recognizes the voice a little too late, sees pain flash across Cas’s face, feels it slice through his gut before Cas tamps it down again, squashes it like a bug or some creeping crawling thing.

Cas takes another drink and speaks to the lingering ache still burning in Dean’s chest; “It’s all just fucking hysterical.”

0-0-0

Midnight doesn’t so much as ‘strike’ as it oozes in like ectoplasm. Just creeps up on them and drools out of every orifice.

It starts with the sound of soft voices in the camp. Flashlight beams and the creaking of door hinges. Escalates into car engines fighting to turn over, the slosh of gas in cans. Chuck’s voice wafting on the stale breeze.

“We’re almost out of personal hygiene products and the toilets in ‘Fontaine’ and ‘Wilderness’ are backed up again. Also, we’re running low on penicillin and Tylenol—“

The Other’s voice comes out almost echoing, like someone rubbing a wet finger around the rim of a wine glass beneath his words. “We’ll take care of it.”

Chuck says something else but Dean doesn’t hear it, Cas choses that moment to clear his throat and push up from his chair. He stretches and his back pops like a xylophone.

Dean watches him, feels like his eyes are swollen and filled with grit.

The Other’s offbeat footsteps ascend the steps outside and he pulls open the door, meets Dean’s eyes and jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Cas swings on his jacket again and leaves without a backward glance. Without any hesitation.

Dean feels the weight of his own gaze like a crushing force. He slides off the table and is tempted to defy Him, tempted to try and fight him, for the simple fact that he hates this guy right now. Hates him more than he’s hated anyone—and he realizes, standing there, that it should scare him how much he hates himself. It should evoke some kind of emotional response anyway. Nobody should hate themselves this much, for any reason.

But he does… my GOD does he hate himself.

I won’t let this happen. I WON’T let this happen!

The Other gives him a little shove down the steps but Dean manages not to land face first in the mud.

The Other swings himself into a truck, it’s dented and the tailgate is missing, replaced by what looks like part of a ladder. There are an array of spotlights along the top of the cab and the roll bar. Dean thinks it looks a little too much like his dad’s truck for his liking and hunches his shoulders, flinches visibly when Cas puts a hand on his arm and nudges him toward a banged up Jeep Wrangler at the back of the group.

There’s a spotlight on each fender and one on top, scratches and mud halfway up the sides. Cas has to pop the hood and bang on the starter with a hammer while Dean turns the key to get it going. Cas looks pleased with himself when he slides behind the wheel, grins and fastens the door closed with a bungee cord as he heads out, and flips a switch on the dash to blaze the spotlights. He drives one handed, laid back. Automatically. His foot is heavy on the gas and light on the brake going around curves.

The truck ahead of them only has one functioning tail light and someone’s duct taped a halogen lamp to the hood in an effort to replace a busted headlight. It casts uneven ugly shadows against the car ahead of them, catches on downed limbs and debris in the road. Every so often they have to dodge into the median or onto the berm to circumvent pileups or things Dean tries not to look at.

Cas takes a few more pills, offers some to Dean. Falls silent after a while, when he realizes he could have a better conversation with the cracked windshield.

They come upon the car Dean had stolen and he isn’t entirely surprised to see that someone has set it on fire. It’s blazing merrily as they pass.

Dean dozes for a while, fitfully, his stomach is upset and the ache of it wakes him too suddenly too often. He retains vague images of a room that isn’t a room, feeling trapped and torn apart and violated—and searing heat, then nothing. Flashes, the night sky where there was once blazing brightness. Eyes—a reflection—a sense of something MORE—

He jolts awake again, hands instinctively going to his crotch, trying to cover the uncomfortable pressure behind his zipper. Cas snorts out a bitter laugh and shakes his head.

The sun rises in shades of gray, yellow and red. There are clouds on the horizon that seethe and grow as they drive.

Nine AM and the sky has grown dark, the air feels heavy and thick with intent and power. They’ve slowed down to practically a crawl, once or twice they’ve stopped completely while some of the others have moved gutted cars or fought off ‘Croats’ that have come running at them. Dean tries not to see the bodies lying on the sides of the road as they drive past, or the slump shouldered figures wandering down the side of the highway dripping blood and glowing red and gray and black.

Dean isn’t entirely surprised to find himself in Kansas City again, on the Missouri side of the river. It’s kind of fitting. Makes him think maybe that there is some bigger purpose here. Some grand design. Then the Other looks at him and Dean feels hollow again.

_Say yes before Sam does…_

No. Sam wouldn’t—would he?

 _Wouldn’t he?_ _He’s alone and he’s hurt and you’re off chasing God instead of helping him. Everybody has a breaking point, Dean. Everyone._

The roads are impassable by vehicle, so they climb out and start walking. After about a mile and a half the Other starts visibly lagging, starts limping noticeably.

Dean feels a nagging sense of curiosity and turns to go see what’s up but Cas catches his arm, gives him a warning look and a quick shake of his head. It feels wrong somehow, to ignore it, so he steps closer and hisses toward Cas’ ear. “What happened to his—to my leg?”

“It was blown off by a trickster.”

“When?”

“Late August, early September of oh-nine I think.”

Dean practically trips over his own feet. “What?” He lowers his voice again; “That’s only—that’s only like four months from now!—Then… When I came from,” He feels sick. “What happened?”

“What aren’t you understanding? The Trickster part or the exploded part?”

“No, I mean HOW, I don’t want to have my fucking foot _exploded_ by a trickster!”

Cas snorted; “You’re lucky you didn’t get your head blown off… and I don’t mean the one on your shoulders.”

“Shut it!” The Other barks, limps past them and gives Cas a dark glare. “I gave you one job. Keep HIM quiet, can you do it or not?”

Cas squares his shoulders; “I can.”

“Then start doing it!”

Cas’ jaw compresses and the Other stomps away.

Dean throws up a middle finger at his back, just because he can and feels slightly smug. It gets half a grin from Cas anyway.

They walked maybe five miles before Dean realized he and the Other were both flagging. Dean’s chest ached and the cough he’d developed while running days before seemed to resurface as a raw burn in his chest. The Other called for a break and the group sequestered itself in the boarded up doorway to what looked to have been a craft store at one time. Dean felt unbelievably out of shape and even though his stomach was upset, nerves compounded by going so long without his medication, he ate when Cas shoved a power bar at him. It was two years out of date and speckled with white dots on the chocolate coating but he tore into it without hesitation. Dean thought it tasted like stale cereal and cardboard, and left a gritty unpleasant film on his tongue. But when Cas handed him another, Dean ate it as well, ignored the strange looks he got because of his noisy stomach and washed it all down with warm water from the Chitaqua well, straight out of a bottle with a rosary floating in it.

The others seemed a little relieved when he didn’t start foaming at the mouth and continued with their own ‘meal’.

The rest of the walk was quiet. Tense. The Other was still limping, but seemed to take longer strides in spite of it. Dean tried to smother the roughness of his breathing, but still garnered dirty looks from those around him for the wheeze of it.

The Jackson County Sanitarium is just how Dean remembers it from his childhood. It had been years and years ago, dad had stopped by here to interview a witness that worked in the office, led tours apparently. Dad had left Dean by the car on the phone with Sam, who’d contracted mono and was holed up in the motel with his cumbersome old desk top and hacked dialup.

Dean had thought the building imposing before, now… now it was a brick edifice against a black, seething sky. The trees and grass and flora around the building grew wild, glowed with life that was tainted by black. Sparked and flicked at them all like flames. Reaching out from the epicenter of the building into the world, like the legs of a titanic spider or the tentacles of an octopus.

There was a line of cars around the building, gutted, rims melted to the asphalt like candle wax. The air felt chilled, like right before a storm all the warmth of the world gets sucked away.

The Other led them to the front of the building and Dean could see the gate was untouched by the creeping ivy that had overtaken everything else. The sidewalk was littered with brown crackling leaves crushed under feet and left to bleed out on the concrete. Like road kill baking in the sun.

Thunder rolled overhead and Dean flinched instinctually, crouched and shuffled over where the Other was leaning, peering over the hood of one of the ruined cars at the building.

The woman with the ponytail spoke, gruff and low and gripped her gun a little tighter; “You sure about this?”

The Other points to one of the windows on the second floor, Dean can see through it into a small empty room, something feels off but he keeps his mouth shut, turns to give his future self a long look.

“They’ll never see us coming. Trust me,” The Other gives the woman a tiny crooked grin and she pursed her lips, nodded and looked away. “Now, weapons check, we’re on the move in five—“

“Uh—“ Dean gives his shoulder a smack; “Hey, me… Can I talk to you for a second? Alone?”

The Other rolls his eyes, hands his field glasses to Cas and limps over.

It takes a few minutes, Dean waits, watches the Other limping over, scanning the tree line for ‘Croats’. “What?”

Dean motions with the flat of his hand; “What the hell was that?”

“What?”

“’They’ll never see us coming. Trust me?’ I mean I’ve told some whoppers in my day but that’s a whole new level of bullshit! Now, tell me what’s really going on here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—“

“I know you and you’re lying to them. You’re lying to me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I know your lying expressions. I see them in the mirror every morning. Now what aren’t you telling us?”

The Other’s lips roll back from his teeth and his voice drops to a dangerous growl; “You need to calm the fuck down before you Light Up and bring every demon in the city down on us.”

Dean’s jaw tightened and his hands curled into fists. He could feel the grace under his skin, but the Other was right, about this at least. He breathed in and pulled it back, stuffed it down deep and exhaled. “Okay… now you’d better start laying out some answers, cause I’m pretty sure I’m not the only member of your posse with questions and if you’ve got nothing then I might just take my doubts over to them—“

And suddenly there’s a hand on his shoulder, pressing right over that symbol Cas had drawn on it—he could feel the tingle in his skin flare anew.

“No, you won’t.”

“I won’t?”

“Look around you… LOOK. We’re in the middle of Ground Zero, man. This place should be white hot with Croats and demons. Where are they?”

Dean blinks, blinks some more and his eyebrows draw down; “They cleared a path for us—which means this—“

“Is a trap… Exactly.”

He’s prepared to fight, thinks maybe this version of himself is demon infested and the only way he can’t tell is because he can’t see his own color, but the Other lifts a finger to his lips.

“Then we can’t go through the front—“

“We’re not going through the front.” He jerked his head back toward the group readying their weapons. “They are.”

“No.”

“Yeah… They’re the decoys, you and me, we’re going through the back—“

“You’re going to feed your friends into a meat grinder? Cas too? You—You’re gonna use their deaths as a diversion.”

The hand on his shoulder tightens and Dean can feel the power in it, honed and razor sharp.

Dean shakes his head; “No. I would never do this. Not to my friends, not to Cas, man. CAS!”

“Cas knew this would happen eventually. If he wasn’t ready for it he wouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, wake up! He’s here because of YOU! He’s here because it doesn’t matter what kind of shit comes out of your mouth, he’d follow you to the ends of the fucking earth—IS, in fact—He’d do anything you told him to because he loves you!”

The Other snorts; “Love?” He shakes his head, “You poor dumb bastard— He doesn’t know how to love. Never has, never will. It’s not in his programing,” He leans forward, like he’s talking to a small child, grinning with a sad, wounded kind of glee Dean only recognizes because he can FEEL it radiating off of Him like heat, “The sooner you realize that and get the fuck over yourself, the easier this whole apocalypse thing will be… Cas isn’t a person, he doesn’t have a soul. He doesn’t feel. He’s a big cosmic rainbow that can walk and talk. He mimics things as he learns them, like a fucking parrot.Things like him? They don’t matter, not like people do. He doesn’t have the ability to mean anything, Dean, and even if it might be possible that he would love something, I promise from the bottom of my heart, he most certainly never loved you.”

And Dean sees red. Both literally and metaphorically. In that instant something shifts in his vision and he can see COLOR around the Other. Flecks and slashes of it like scars, like lightning bolts running through him. He sees himself like a broken piece of pottery all put back together wrong and badly. He feels rage unlike anything he’s felt since Hell billow up from within him. Something ugly and vengeful and insane—Dean lunges at himself, punches, kicks, scratches, bites—They roll across the ground in a flurry of fists and Dean has time enough to realize exactly what Cas had warned him about before a knee jerks up toward his balls and a fist crashes into his face. Something above his mouth and below his eyes pops and for a second he’s blinded by the pain of it, claps both hands up from where they’d been fending off the kick to the groin to cover his nose. Or what’s left of it, it’s twisted a little to the left, completely off center, blood running freely from both nostrils.

The son of a bitch broke his nose!

But before he can react there’s another hit. BANG! Right on the chin and down Dean goes into the dirt like a dead thing.

He wakes up a few minutes later with leaves sticking to the blood on his face and the sound of gunshots—screams.

No—nonono!

He staggers, falls, forces himself up again and runs toward the front gate—It’s closed, ivy and vines twisting and locking together, glowing dark with power.

There are more gunshots and then it’s quiet… A scream of rage and sorrow and—

BANG!

Thunder rolls over head, Dean thinks it’s kind of poetic, if he was in to that kind of thing. He turns and runs, follows the fence and finds the vines have twisted up and back to create some kind of artistic vaulted arch burgeoning with large glistening flowers, he’s never seen any like them before. They seem to weep as he passes through.

It doesn’t exactly feel real because there is such jubilant energy in the air. The kind of energy he always equated with Christmas, the few times as kids he and Sam exchanged gifts that weren’t stolen, or the spring Sam had his sixth birthday and Uncle Bobby had baked a lumpy cake with too sweet icing. Dean’s pretty sure Sam still has the pocket knife Bobby had given him.

It doesn’t feel real because the courtyard is light brightly from within, is positively GLOWING like the world had in the memories he’d seen from Cas. It’s ALIVE and beautiful in a way very little in the world today is… But at the same moment it was awash with such unimaginable horror.

The colt is on the ground broken cleanly in two and Dean sees himself on his back in the dirt, staring upward with such a serene, empty expression on his face while some douchebag in a white silk suit and white loafers steps on his neck.

Future Dean isn’t fighting it. Seems perfectly content to let it happen. Maybe he can’t move, maybe he does want it to happen. Maybe he just wants it to be over—

Dean sees the grace in His chest reaching up and out pleadingly, searching the BRIGHTNESS wreathing the man in white, beseechingly. Like a child begging forgiveness for some wrong that seems to have shattered their world. Please—Plea—

It’s the same sound. A wet pop like a joint coming out of place, Dean knows that sound, can never—WILL NEVER FORGET IT. Remembers how Sam’s legs had just folded up and dropped him without warning.

It’s not a quick thing. Dean watches the red slashes and gray of life fade slowly, escaping like breath from his lungs—Dissipating. He sees his own pupils expanding like a flower opening up and it’s weirdly beautiful how quiet it is. How soundless.

He’d always thought he would die bloody and loud. Go out with a bang as they say. He never expected this—this SILENCE. Not even a whimper, just the slow hiss of air leaving a cooling sack of meat—

Dean shivers, feels the air temperature drop suddenly like he’s taken an arctic plunge. He half expects vengeful spirits, but there is nothing. Just the distant rumble of thunder and a soft pattering of rain on leaves.

The Douchebag turns and surprise lifts his eyebrows.

Dean, at one time can’t look away and can’t make himself look. It’s the strangest thing. There is Sam. Sam’s stupid hair and goofy smile and dumb straight nose, but at the same time what looks out of his brother’s eyes is not Sam.

There is kindness in those eyes, sorrow—self-righteousness. And cold, calculating intelligence.

“Oh,” He turns and faces Dean, smiles a little, like he thinks this is just too precious. “Aren’t you a surprise.”

Lucifer has no color. There is only brightness—BROKENNESS. There is a swathe cut across his face just like Cas’. He’s blinded, and around his wrists, ankles neck and brow burn symbols—WORDS Dean has never seen or imagined before. He can’t understand them, but they are there none the less and he feels their power. Sees fractures running through them and knows all at once that these were binds, were spells woven to keep Lucifer restrained, and now he wears them like fucking jewelry.

In the center of his chest, where Castiel’s color is brightest, there is in Lucifer a singularity. A darkness surrounded by light so bright Dean can’t see past it.

Where Castiel is immense, Lucifer makes him look like an infant, like a matchstick. A fucking kitten in a room full of lions.

There is a fucking archangel wearing his brother’s skin and Dean can’t find his voice. Can’t think straight, can only feel the grace in his chest WRITHING because something is WRONGWRONGWRONG!

Lucifer cocks his head to the side, smiles a little wider; “Now, what’s this?” He is suddenly too close, much too close but Dean can’t move away, can’t move at all—is frozen where he stands as the devil lifts a hand and points at Dean’s chest.

His grace recoils, buries itself deep and Dean kind of wishes he could follow it, instead he’s stuck there, rooted to the spot staring Lucifer in the face—in Sam’s face.

“I think someone’s got their chocolate in your peanut butter, Dean,” His finger lifts, almost touches the seal or whatever it was Cas had put on him but Dean finds his voice. “Someone plays dirty—“

“Don’t touch me.”

Lucifer stops, looks at him with Sam’s eyes and Sam’s amused little grin; “And you’re going to stop me?”

Something in his stomach spasms and if the paralyzing terror wasn’t enough, now he’s got fucking hiccups and Lucifer’s grin widens.

“Oh, this is adorable.”

Dean bares his teeth; hic— “If you’re gonna kill me,” –hic— “Then just kill me.”

His brows pull down and he glances over his shoulder where Dean can see the Other lying there, eyes glazed, still and gone ashen in death. He feels sick—remembers seeing his own corpse as the hellhounds had dragged him away and wants to vomit.

“Don’t you think that would be a little… redundant?”

Dean can’t look for long, turns with his stomach reaching up his throat and is diaphragm in spasm.

He steps closer, catches Dean’s eyes and how they flick away again, how the human is shaking, the jerking painful little hitches in his breath. “It must be painful speaking to me in this—shape. But it had to be your brother. It had to be,” He reaches again but Dean’s body moves on autopilot, twists out of his reach, heart beating a mile a minute.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Dean. What do you think I’m going to do?”

He snorts; “Oh, I don’t know, maybe deep-fry the planet?”

Lucifer looks visibly offended, blinks and gives his head a shake and the world around him ripples, SEETHES with LIFE. “Now, why would I want to destroy this stunning thing? Beautiful in a trillion different ways… The last PERFECT handiwork of God?”

“Oh, but you’ll wipe out six billion people without blinking?”

“I will rid the world of a parasite, an abomination.”

“The only parasite I see is you—Get OUT of my brother.”

Lucifer smiles with Sam’s face, folds his hands so placidly, like a school teacher all calm beauty and terrible knowledge; “Have you ever heard the story of how I fell from grace?”

Dean’s broken nose aches; “Oh, good god,” –hic— “You’re not gonna tell me a bedtime story, are you?” –hic— “My stomach’s almost out of bile—“

“Do you know why God cast me down? Because I loved him. More than anything,” He tilts his head to the side, gives a little shiver of disgust, “And then God created—you. The little… hairless apes. And then he asked all of us to bow down before you, to love you, more than him. And I said, ‘Father, I can’t.’ I said, ‘These human beings are flawed, murderous.’ And for that, God had Michael cast me into hell… Now, tell me, does the punishment fit the crime?” He motions vaguely around himself; “Especially when I was right?”

Dean feels drawn in by him, gripped by gigantic invisible hands and images are forced into his head, play out like film reels behind his eyes. Cave men beating one another with sticks, men stoning their wives and children to death. Women drowning their infants in bathtubs. Children burning their parents alive in their beds. Guns and bombs and atomic blasts, starving children, greed and hate and murder and—

Dean sees the world again, a jade and azure orb of pristine beauty, sees the green slowly eaten up by gray and concrete and power plants and stone. Sees mountains unmade and forests burned to the ground to make room for shopping malls and nuclear waste dumps. Sees animals strangled by garbage, beaches littered with dying whales. Sees chemicals raining down from poison clouds and destroying the innocent BRIGHTNESS of the world.

He stumbles backward, arms up over his head to fend off the onslaught but it continues.

“Look what six billion of you have done to this thing, and how many of you blame me for it!”

Dean snarls, finds the grace tucked down deep within himself and pushes OUT with it, shoves back against the images the devil is forcing upon him and BURNS at the dark tainted edges creeping near his own.

Lucifer withdraws, like Dean is no more annoying than a spot of dirt under his nail. He stands there with Sam’s shoulders slumped and this kicked puppy look on his face. “I am not the evil here. I am not the mistake.”

Dean breathes quickly through his mouth, spits a gob of blood and wipes gingerly at his nose, breathes deep and tries to get his insides to stop twitching; “No… You’re not fooling me with this sympathy-for-the-devil crap. I know what you are.”

“What am I?”

He’s shaking, can’t believe he’s backtalking the devil but this isn’t right. It’s not right. “You’re the same thing, only bigger. The same brand of cockroach I’ve been squashing my whole life. An ugly, evil, belly-to-the-ground, supernatural piece of shit. The only difference between them and you is the size of your ego.”

He chuckles, smiles and it’s too straight to be Sam’s smile. Too even and perfect; “I like you, Dean… I get what the other angels see in you,” He steps close, tilts his head and motions to Sam’s upper lip; “You’ve got a little schmutz .”

Dean lifts his hand to wipe the blood away again—and finds his face clean, his nose centered again and his teeth no longer loose from the last punch.

Lucifer smiles, “Goodbye, Dean. We’ll meet again soon—“

“You better just kill me now.”

“Pardon?”

“If you don’t kill me now I swear I will find a way to kill you, and I won’t stop.”

He smiles again, like Dean is a lobotomized puppy. “No you won’t. I know you won’t… Just like I know you won’t say yes to Michael either. And I know you won’t kill Sam,” He looms closer without actually moving, stands there pristine and placid while the world around him grows and spreads and the sky finally begins to tear open, rain falling—sizzling against the earth like acid. “Whatever you do, you will always end up here. Whatever choices you make, we will always end up—here… I win. So, I win.”

“You’re wrong—“ Dean feels it bubbling up in him, feels everything just BOILING to the surface. “You’re wrong.”

“See you in five years, Dean.”

And it’s like the world just swallows Lucifer up. Like a mouth opened in the air around him and sucked him down. Thunder rolls overhead and Dean takes a step back, feels the rain hitting his skin, can feel the grace in his chest building and building and—

The Other is still lying there, dead and sallow, Ivy and climbing rose vine are curling over his legs, pulling him away. The building behind him pops—CRACKS and twists of briar as thick as Dean’s thigh spear through the roof and start pulling it all down.

No. Please no!

Dean reaches out with his grace, screams into the ether for Cas, tries to find him as the building collapses in on itself, but there is nothing to find. Above him lightning cracks, lights up the darkened sky like midday but Dean hears it over the cacophony of splintering stone and rending metal.

Like a flag in a storm gale.

He feels the grace of an angel behind him and turns with a fist and a cry of rage—

Zechariah is waiting for him—catches his fist and finds the center of Dean’s forehead with the deceptively gentle touch of two fingers.

He feels it like a hook in the spine, jerking him forward and back and left and right—He sees BRIGHTNESS and all six of Zechariah’s hands—stumbles as they come to a stop by the bed in the Super Eight in Oakland.

The clock on the wall reads exactly the same as it had when Dean had been pulled away three days ago. Sputnik’s head lifts from her cushion and she yaps in fear at Zechariah, lunges forward and puts herself between him and Dean. Snarls and snaps her jaws.

Dean jerks his fist away and shakes it out, feels every hair on his body lifting with a sudden influx of energy, like lightning is ready to strike. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t let her tear you an asshole!”

Zechariah meets Dean’s eyes and sighs, annoyed; “Enough… Dean, enough. You saw it, right? You saw what happens. You’re the only person who can prove the devil wrong… Just –“ And his eyes slip down to Dean’s chest—hone in on the spot right below his right clavicle.

It happens in an instant. Zechariah’s brows draw down in confusion then shoot up to his hairline and the next that electric feeling in Dean’s skin becomes unbearable. Something burns HOT against Dean’s Chest, the something Cas had drawn on his shoulder glows white and—

**BOOM!**

It feels like he’s been punched in the chest by God.

Sputnik shrieks in surprise and confused pain and Dean feels himself come free of the earth, launched backward by an invisible force—He collides with the far wall, feels the plaster dent and crack beneath him then hits the ground hard on his face and everything goes black.

0-0-0

Someone’s shaking him.

Everything is fuzzy and dim and his chest feels empty. His head is burning, his throat is on fire—

“Dean.”

_Air—air, I need AIR!_

**“DEAN!”**

He surges upright with a gasp, feels his lungs re-inflating like old balloons. They pop and crackle in his chest and Dean, for an instant, expects himself to be locked away in his grave again.

Castiel is kneeling over him, has wide eyes and a firm grip on Dean’s shoulders, fingers slotting right along the fading scar on his arm—

Dean can feel the grace of him cycling high, pulsing through Dean’s body in search of injury. He groans and slaps a hand up over the spot on his chest, feels the skin beneath is raw—burned.

Sputnik is licking his face.

Dean gags and shoves her away, pushes Castiel away and leans against the wall, tries to right himself. What’s going on? What happened. Holy FUCK! Did a bomb go off?

“Leg—My leg—“ He reaches for it, finds everything intact and the world grays out again in relief.

“Dean, we have to go!” Castiel grabs him again, shakes him hard enough that Dean’s teeth rattle, and pulls him up. Dean wobbles on his feet, one hand to his head and finally gets a look at the room—or what’s left of it.

There are scorch marks on the walls, the carpet is charred and the ceiling is falling in. Dean can already hear fire and police sirens. He finds the lapels of Castiel’s borrowed coat and grips them, nods dumbly because his mouth is dry and he can’t find any words.

They’re outside a second later, Dean feels the jolt of travel through his middle, but isn’t aware of truly moving. They’re beside the car, and then they’re on a stretch of highway, Sputnik is whining and shivering at his feet now, and Dean isn’t sure where he is but Castiel’s eyes are bright starlit blue and Dean can FEEL the power of him. Can FEEL all those voices he’d taken for granted. Can feel the very grace of Heaven pouring into him and through him into Castiel.

He sags bodily against Castiel, groans and feels like maybe he’s about to pass out.

Castiel holds his elbows like he weighs nothing and keeps him upright. “What happened? How did Zechariah find you? How did you do that?”

Dean pushes his hands away, chokes on a breath and wraps both arms around Castiel’s shoulders, hides his face in his neck; “Don’t.”

Castiel’s whole vessel is tense, uncertainty thick around him like the scent of bad cologne; “Dean?”

“Don’t…” His breath catches in his throat and he chokes on it, coughs a little and pulls it back in by jerks. “Don’t take my crap. You matter… Fuck, Cas—You matter, OK? You’re not a parrot… You feel things, maybe not like I do, but you do feel stuff… I know it,” –hic— “Don’t let me hurt you. You don’t need that shit— If I try to do something that’ll hurt you, kick my ass. I know you can, don’t let me forget it—” He lets out a breath in a slow hiss, tries to bite back the burn of tears in his sinuses and fails, “Don’t let me use you like that, okay?”

Castiel just stands there silently.

“Cas, OK?”

His hands shake, grip a little tighter and Dean feels the shift in him, can feel the bubble of emotion amid the thrum of grace. He’d never noticed it before, too blinded by his own problems to see it, but it’s so clear now.

“Okay, Dean.”

He shudders in relief, nods and stands there for a few seconds more just relishing in the pressure, in the solidity of Castiel before he steps back rubbing his face dry and muffling a cough into his fist.

Castiel stares at him and there is something peculiar in his expression, confused and awed and maybe a little enlightened, Dean doesn’t know. He lets his fingers slip and hook oh-so-easily against Castiel’s and doesn’t try to pull away. Breathes in and lets it out; “I need a phone.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

 


	37. Rocket Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Update Thursday. I hope you guys like it!  
> Thanks Jessi for reading over it and pointing out the problems. You're a deity!

0-0-0

Jo is asleep in the stiff reclining chair by the bed. Ellen and Bobby have disappeared to the hotel for the night.

It’s quiet in the hospital and Sam is dreaming of Cold Oak. How the knife sliding into his spine had felt almost the same as Zechariah breaking it. Maybe it’s just how things are supposed to be. Maybe the lack of results in finding a fix for this has less to do with the fact that there isn’t one, and more to do with the fact that this is how Sam was supposed to end up.

Sam has always believed in a Higher Purpose, in something like Destiny. He has always believed that there is a reason behind everything and he has yet to be proven wrong. The problem is, was the reason he was paralyzed because it will end up helping things some unforeseen time down the line, or was it a power play, like what Zechariah did to Dean’s head. He’s not sure he wants to know in all truth, he’d rather try and be optimistic, fail and fail as he has the last few weeks.

It’s hard to look up and keep an open mind when you find yourself numb from the chest down with your intestines suddenly ending through a hole in your side. Not to mention a brand new, oh-so-shiny wheelchair at your bedside. Complements of someone’s insurance Bobby’s managed to weasel out for you.

Sam’s been in it five times and already hates it. HATES IT.

And then Sam isn’t in Cold Oak anymore, he’s in the hospital where most of his dreams, and nightmares of late, have taken place. The chair beside the bed is empty and the hospital is SILENT. All the IVs and wires and tubes are gone—

There is someone standing by the bed to his right. In front of the window.

She’s beautiful.

She smells like cinnamon and chocolate. Smiles and tilts her head, “Hi, Sam.”

He can’t speak, thinks maybe he’s choking.

“I’ve missed you,” Her hand feels cool, so cool against his brow and Sam can breathe again, feels each whorl of her fingertips against his skin, her scent—He’s inundated by her presence, washed out to sea.

“Jess—“ He swallows past a dryness in his throat, tries to quiet himself because he wants to scream. Wants to wrap her in his arms and never let go. “Jess, I’m so sorry—“

She shushes him, and it sounds like waves crashing on the beach.

“I’m dreaming. I know I am—“

“Yeah, so what?”

Sam snorts, finds he misses being able to snort and it takes him a few seconds to realize that he can move. He sits up and stares down at himself in awe, throws back the blankets and finds he’s wearing his track pants, there are no tubes, no wound down his middle from the surgery. He is whole and sensate and being able to wiggle his toes has never felt so delicious!

“Sam?”

He turns and looks at her, cards his fingers into her hair, pulls her close and breathes in the scent of her. Allows himself to sink back into this dream because dreams of her whole and alive are so rare, so precious to him.

“Sam, I miss you.”

“I miss you too, so much.”

“I’m so sorry this happened to you. You shouldn’t have to suffer like this.”

“We’re looking for a way to fix it. Dean, Cas—Bobby, Ellen and Jo—All of them, they’re all looking for a way to fix it.”

“What if they can’t find it?”

“They’ll find it,” He sets his jaw, holds her a little tighter. “I know they will—“

“No,” She pulls away, pushes his hair back out of his face; “What if THEY can’t find it… What if you’re the only one who can and you’re lying here in a hospital bed.”

He makes a hollow sound in his throat; “I can’t exactly check myself out—“

“Why not?”

“Zechariah broke my spine. If I stop breathing in my sleep I could die.”

“No you won’t… You’re just scared. You’re afraid to go out there like this, aren’t you.”

He stares at her, gives his head a shake in denial; “I’m not scared—“

“Yes, you are, look at yourself, Sam. You may be stuck in one place but you’re not here. You just go through the motions, refuse to acknowledge that your life is different. You enjoy being the victim, don’t you? It’s why you never take responsibility for your choices. It’s why you never told me about the dreams, why you blamed Ruby for Lilith—You’re so scared someone may see the real you you’re just gonna lie here when the answer could be right out there, waiting for you to take it.”

“Jessica, I—I can’t. Look at me, I’m hooked up to all these machines—“

“All I see is a coward, a little boy who is too afraid to suck it up and do something about the mess he’s in. You’re always afraid. You’re afraid to get out of this bed and go look for a fix yourself because you might not like what you have to do to get it. You were afraid you’d make a monster out of yourself so you went to Dean about Lilith and almost killed him… You were afraid to be called a freak so you didn’t say anything about the dreams when they started and I’m dead because of it.”

Sam gave his head a confused shake and released her, leaned back to meet her eyes; “What?”

“You’re always afraid, Sam… That’s what makes you weak, the fear. You put on a show, puff yourself up, but you’re still a scared little boy inside and you always will be. You’re not going to get any magic cure, Sam. Unless you get out of this bed and find the answers on your own, because I promise you, they aren’t going to be able to find them. They could look from now until doomsday and never find something that can heal you because YOU are the only one who can, Sam. It has to be you.”

“How?”

“An angel did this to you, a more powerful one can undo it.”

“Like who? Michael?”

“Michael would kill you on sight. All that darkness in you, growing and growing—Dean can see it. Why do you think he can’t look at you? You can’t undo something like what all that blood did to you. Michael would burn you alive without a second thought. Any of them would. You don’t have anyone else, Sam. Nobody can help you, and you’re too scared to help yourself.”

“I’m not scared,” His voice shook.

“I don’t believe you.”

He bowed his head into her shoulder. Her fingers carded through his hair, rubbed along his scalp and down the back of his neck. He twined his arms around her waist.

“Shhh.”

Sam felt lips on his hairline, chilled breath, a voice that was neither warm nor Jessica’s.

“It’s OK… We can fix this,” Lucifer smiled, “We can fix this. Together.”

0-0-0

Dean found a payphone. A remnant of the eighties, it still had the BELL symbol in faded blue plastic at the top edge. It was at the end of a truck stop parking lot some thirty miles from where Castiel had dropped them, which turned out to be Pennsylvania. Little guy liked Amish Country, who knew?

Dean plunked in a couple dimes and punched Sam’s cell numbers in one by one until there was a ring.

“Dean?”

“Holy shit, Sam, you have no idea how good it is to hear your voice—“ He wipes a hand over his brow and eyes Castiel where he’s parading Sputnik about on an improvised lead. A couple shoe laces pulled from a pair of heavy winter boots Dean had in the trunk.

“Dean, I’ve been calling your numbers for two hours man, what the hell—No, it can wait… We need to talk.”

“Yeah, we really do… Look, Cas and me had to ditch our stuff at the hotel so I’m out a phone for the time being… I had a surprise visit from Big Brother.”

“Me too.”

“Zechariah?”

“No… Lucifer.”

Dean’s blood ran cold.

“Looks like you’re not the only vessel in the family.”

Dean lowered his voice, braced himself up against the blocky old phone; “Sam—Sam, how did he find you? What did you say to him? You—“

“He found me through Jo’s dreams… Look, I can’t—I woke myself up before he got very far, but I heard enough to last a thousand lifetimes… I have an idea, alright? I need you to find a psychic, a real psychic, not a Ms. Cleo, no matter how sexy, OK?”

“Gotcha.”

“Find a psychic and call me. In the meantime see if Cas can teach you to lucid dream—“

“Ew— Dude!“

“Aw, come on. Lucid dreaming is where you’re aware that you’re asleep and you can control what you see and do while in the dream.”

“You mean like dream walking in your own head?”

“Yeah,” Sam took a slow deep breath, “Cas was right, I was able to kick him out.”

“Okay, what else?”

“Uh… Think you can find me a car?”

Dean snorted; “You mean a car with one of those ramps—“

“I mean a car that I can drive.”

“Oh, like with the hand thingies.”

“Thingies?”

“Shuddup, it’s four in the morning.”

Sam took another deep breath; “What are we gonna do, Dean? How much longer can we hold out against this? What do we do?”

He scuffed a hand through his hair, scratched at the scars on the side of his head; “Well, first, I’m gonna shower, then I’m gonna sleep, and when I wake up I’m gonna make this diner regret the ‘All You Can Eat Breakfast Buffett’ if it’s the last thing I do. After that? Hell I got no idea… We’re not getting anywhere with this whole ‘finding God’ thing. I don’t know if we’re running in circles chasing someone who doesn’t want to be found, or if there’s nothing there to begin with. Maybe he actually wants this to happen. Maybe he wants Lucifer to burn the world.”

“Maybe we’re focusing on the wrong thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re only looking for a way to kill him, but Lucifer was in the cage… what if we put him back in?”

Dean bared his teeth and squeezed his eyes closed; “I would be much more comfortable with the devil DEAD, Sam—“

“Of course, but—Well, locked away is better than roaming the earth.”

“Okay, I get it, that’s the B plan… two options are definitely better than one,” He sighed rubbed at a twinge in his eyebrow. “So—uh—how are you?”

Sam made a noise, probably as close to a snort as he could get, “I just found out I’m Satan’s coat and tails, I’m peachy.”

Dean wanted to say that it could be worse, but with their luck it could and would be so he kept his mouth shut.

“What happened with Zechariah?”

Dean hummed, plugged in a few more dimes, “I spent three days in the future.”

“The future?”

“Oh, yeah… Dawn of the Dead meets Left Behind only with lots of creepy, _creepy_ plants.”

“Okay, you have my attention.”

“Long story short; Everything goes south—Remember Croatoan?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s part of it… Oh—Apparently you and me are immune to it.”

“What?”

“You’re just flat-out immune, if I get exposed the grace burns it out… It ain’t pretty, but—“ Dean sighed. “Anyway, that future is a bad place to be, so we have to really think this shit through before we do anything. Also I now know exactly what it feels like to be punched in the face by myself, and I’m considering seeking professional help for an eating disorder I still don’t want to admit that I have…”

Sam was quiet for a moment but Dean knew he was still there, could hear the oxygen hissing on the other end of the line; “Dean, are you serious?”

“About the immunity thing or being punched in the face by myself? Because—Damn.”

“No, I mean are you serious about getting help?”

He looks down, tries not to kick nervously at the crumpled tissues in the corner because fuck knew if there were condoms in them or not. “Yeah… I—I’m not in good shape. I’m—I need it.”

“Okay… The—uh—the doctor they’ve got me talking to—“

“No, I need help that isn’t gonna chuck me in the loony bin for saying I spent forty years in hell.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, OH.”

There is a moment of silence during which Dean watches Sputnik and Castiel having some kind of intense conversation. The dog’s tail is thumping and every so often she tilts her head or lifts a paw and scratches at Castiel’s shin.

Castiel’s gaze never leaves hers, sometimes he speaks aloud, others he doesn’t. Occasionally his eyebrows lift or pull down, but that’s it.

“Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you considered, I don’t know… Talking to Cas? I mean, if anybody’s going to understand what you went through, it’s gonna be him.”

“I don’t want to hear his whole _god_ spiel… That I’m this or that or whatever—fuck—I don’t know.”

“I think Cas is having a crisis of faith, I mean, he rebelled against Heaven for you, Dean. Give the guy some credit.”

Dean wraps an arm around his middle, his stomach hurts and he can’t tell if it’s hunger or nausea. “Sam, I appreciate it, but it’s too early and I’m too tired to be making decisions like this… I don’t even know why I told you. You don’t need my shit on top of all this.”

“It was just a suggestion… And I’m glad you told me. It—it actually helps, gives me something else to focus on instead of the fact I can’t feel my dick.”

“Dude—“

“You started the share circle—“

“Shut up. Cripes…”

Sam let out a sigh, “Look, the nurse is about to come in, I have to go. Call me when you get your phone back.”

Dean hangs up and collects the dimes that spit out at him. Uses the edge of his shirt sleeve to catch the door and open it because fuck it all if he’s catching some weird as fuck disease from a skanky eighties phone booth that smells like ass and feet and barf.

There’s a motel across the highway, a three story thing in an ugly beige and brown color with flickering neon and a sign that boasts a color TV and pay-per-view in every room. Below that is an aluminum shingle under a spotlight that says ‘Free Wi-Fi’ in the motel lounge.

Dean doesn’t expect much when he goes in, the place is crowded, a few minivans with luggage taking up the back seats, semi-trucks and your various cars, singles meeting up for a quickie or cheating spouses on their ‘overnight business trips’.

The lobby is done in stained tile and old carpet that looked like it was from a school in the early seventies. The countertop was chipped and scratched and the florescent bulbs all had a green tint to them.

One room, one queen.

Dean’s stomach bubbled unpleasantly.

Mister Theodore Nugent picked up the tab.

The room was on the second floor, at least two doors away from anyone else, thank Christ, and when Dean opened the door he had his breath held.

It came out in a quick blast because, yeah, OK, it was a truck stop motel, but the place smelled like it had been cleaned recently. With actual cleaning chemicals and disinfectant, there were no ominous looking paintings on the walls, or kitschy décor. It was rather plain, featureless. Wood grain, soft greens and starched white sheets. Dean dropped the emergency duffle he kept in the back on the bed and fished out his medication. Grateful that Sam had had the presence of mind to make sure there was a week’s worth of all his pills in there, just in case. He swallows them, downs two of the three bottles of water he’d picked up at the gas station and pulls the chair out from the desk, clicks on the lamp and calls out to Cas.

He hisses as he peels up his shirt. “You wanted to know how I blasted the room back there?” He gets his shirt off and motions to the gory crust covering a palm sized portion of his upper right chest. “That’s what did it, not me.”

Castiel moves forward like physics don’t matter. He doesn’t blink.

It’s a little creepy.

Dean swallows compulsively and follows the angel’s hand as it lifts to hover, trembling, over the wound. He feels the hurt of it melt away, feels the muscles in his back and stomach relax as it leaves and when Castiel lifts his hand the skin where the mark had been is darker, burned brown and flat and smooth. Dean thinks that it’s similar in appearance to what’s left of the hand print on the opposite shoulder. Shivers and stares at it. “So… what is it?”

Castiel licks his lips, still hasn’t blinked; “It’s my name.”

“What?” Dean’s voice comes out flat, un-amused.

“My name. More specifically, one of the two seals that mark the inside of my sixth hands… Dean where did you find this?” His voice is low, demanding, almost accusatory.

“You drew it on there—Well, future you. Why did it explode like that?”

Castiel sighs, scratches at the scar on his own chest; “The two seals that make up my name have grace constantly in flux between them. When you appeared with a third my grace must have reacted to it, like an open circuit and—“

“And blasted Zechariah.”

“Yes.”

“Why isn’t it doing it now?”

“What grace the future version of myself put into it was likely exhausted. It— burned itself out… I don’t know.”

Dean blinked, touched the mark and looked back to Castiel; “So, uh… Did it work?”

“Did what work?”

“Did it blast Zechariah?”

“Not likely.”

“So he’s still out there?”

“Yes.”

“Can he find us?”

“I made sure to ward the area while you were speaking with the woman behind the desk.”

Dean rubbed the growth of hair on his cheek; “You did that before and he still found us.”

“I believe the woman there called to him. The sigils I left were still intact, but they’re useless if he knows where we are.”

“So, how do we keep him from knowing where we are?”

“Travel carefully and avoid any humans who may have an affiliation with him.”

Dean snorted; “Okay, sounds like a plan,” He pushed himself up and looked around; “I need a shower. I feel funky.”

“Funky?”

Dean disappeared into the bathroom before it became imperative that he define ‘funk’ as a state of being.

There were no springy little hairs in the shower drain, no sticky finger prints on the toilet handle or on the sink knobs. Dean stripped out of his clothes and for a moment just enjoyed the fact of being naked. It was one of those small joys in life most people took for granted.

Dean focused on breathing and ran hot water in the sink cursed those damn cheap disposable razors hotels sometimes left in plastic sleeves and the fact that by noon tomorrow he was going to look like a fucking teenager.

He took a long shower. Bowed his head and let the hot water pound against his scalp. Scrubbed himself three times from head to toe and was still satisfied with the temperature of the water when he turned it off and climbed out. Rubbed himself dry on the scratchy towels and cleared away the fog from the mirror long enough to look at himself again. He examined the puckered scar on his side from the little Croat girl, then the mark on his chest. Thought maybe he could have ignored it if it hadn’t turned brown. Now it just looked like a wound that had gotten badly infected. He’d had one of those once on the back of his left calf. Couldn’t remember exactly what had caused it, only that he’d spent two days in a hospital because of it and Sam had just been tall enough to act as a makeshift crutch when they’d skedaddled at the mention of CPS.

It was gone now, nothing but skin and leg hair. Dean scratched the spot with the top of his other foot, couldn’t help but imagine himself minus one leg. Couldn’t keep the image of the devil wearing Sam’s skin breaking his neck—that SOUND!

Breathe in, breathe out. In out. Don’t think about the fact that he’s got part of Castiel’s name burned into his chest.

Dean shuffled out of the bathroom, dirty clothes under his arm, towel tied tightly around his waist.

Castiel was sitting on the edge of the bed beside the bag, Sputnik asleep at his other side. He watched as Dean passed in front of him, looked a little too hard in Dean’s opinion.

Dean unzipped the bag and fished out a pair of boxers and a t-shirt. There weren’t any sweats in there, Sam had forgotten that, of course, but Dean tried to be optimistic. Tried to, and disappeared into the bathroom again. Came out a few moments later dressed and twisting his towel between his hands because here he was standing in his underwear and there Castiel was sitting on the bed looking at him.

“You should sleep,” Castiel looked away but the tension in his body belied his casual tone.

Dean swallowed, felt like his mouth was too dry, and curled his toes against the nap of the carpet. “What’re you gonna do?”

“I think I’ll just sit here.”

“You, uh—You don’t have to.”

When Castiel turned Dean wasn’t looking at him, was focused instead on twisting his towel into a knot, but he could feel the weight of his gaze, the curiosity and hidden hope in it.

“You were distressed earlier. I could leave if you want.”

It had been three days to Dean, but only about an hour and a half to Castiel and most of it had been spent in the car driving here. Wow…

Dean shook his head, couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say so he went to the bed and peeled the blankets back, found extra pillows on the top shelf of the closet and pulled them down, built a little wall down the center of the bed and motioned to it. “Just—uh—Just sleeping.”

“I don’t need to sleep—“

“No, but I do and you just sitting there is creepy.”

Castiel stood and shrugged out of his coat, slipped it onto a hanger and hooked it on the rail in the closet. Rolled his jeans and over shirt like Dean had done to his dirty ones and put them to the side, then just stood there staring in his socks and t-shirt.

Dean felt himself blush to the roots of his hair. “Cas—Why the hell aren’t you wearing underwear?”

“Should I have been?”

“Yes. You always wear underwear unless you’re in the shower or—or doing naked… things.”

“Like sex.”

“Yeah, like sex,” Dean fumbled through the bag and threw a pair in Castiel’s general direction then busied himself locking the door and laying down salt lines until he was sure the angel had actually put them on.

Castiel took the side of the bed close to the window, Dean stood there for a while before he turned off the light and climbed in. Could feel the presence on the other side of his little wall. Could hear him breathing and the minute shifts of his body as he tried to get comfortable on the lumpy mattress.

Dean held absolutely still, listened, tried not to be too loud clearing his throat or trying to get that something that felt lodged in his chest out.

“Dean?”

He very nearly jumped out of his skin. “Yeah?”

“You’re frightened.”

“Thank you Captain Obvious.”

“What did Zechariah do?”

“He—uh—He showed me what would happen if I kept saying ‘no’.”

“He sent you into the future.”

“Yeah.”

“Dean?”

“Cas?” He smiled when he heard a small huff from the other side of the bed.

“You must understand that the future is not set. Even by showing you that potential outcome he altered it. Human beings aren’t supposed to experience time like this. You are meant to travel through it in a linear pattern, from one moment to the next. Just because you saw it, does not mean that is how it will occur. Each timeline is different, each has a unique outcome—“

“Wait—What?” He lifted his head and peered over the wall at Castiel with his nose wrinkled up.

Castiel was on his back, hands folded placidly on his chest. Dean could feel the outline of his other hands, the non-physical ones folded as well. It was kind of annoying for some irrational reason.

“Every choice, every outcome is played out to its infinite potentiality. Angels can move through these at will, past, present and future. These potentialities only become reality when they are encountered by humanity. Think of it as a literal interpretation of Schrodinger’s Cat.”

Dean balked; “What the hell are you talking about!”

Castiel blinked at him, inhaled and let it out. “Every choice you make, every potential choice you will make, by-and-in relation to your experience, is played out.”

“Cas,” He blinked slowly, “I have no idea what that means.”

Castiel frowned, “Zechariah showed you one of an infinite number of potential futures. He likely showed you the one outcome that would best sway you to his purposes.”

“Are we talking about, like, multiple realities?”

Castiel’s eyes rolled back into his head and his hands clamped into fists. “In the vaguest sense, yes… Angels, myself included, are not entirely omniscient. We don’t know what choices humanity will make, only what choices they are likely to make based on what we know of them… Emotion—strictly HUMAN emotion, can change one’s thinking and, guide their decision making. It makes no logical sense, but humans, make decisions based on feelings. We are aware of that and have been known to use the emotions evoked in certain situations, to bend your will to your needs.”

Dean blinked, “So, you’re saying Zechariah was manipulating me… emotionally.”

“Yes.”

Dean rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling; “What a dick!”

Castiel hummed in agreement.

It was quiet for a long while. Dean lie there going over and over what Castiel had said, trying to convince himself that what he’d seen hadn’t been real—but he had proof that it was. He was human, he had interacted with that future… That meant it was real.

Was it going to happen?

Was he really going to be killed by Lucifer wearing his brother’s skin? Was Ellen—and Bobby and Jo—

Cas—

“Dean?”

His voice came out thin, wavering, like a heat mirage; “Yeah?”

“You’re still frightened.”

He rubbed his face dry, couldn’t get that SOUND out of his head, how his pupils had just—grown. The quiet of it— He couldn’t forget that LOOK on Cas’ face. The resignation, the pain—How had The Other thought Cas couldn’t feel? How had he though there wasn’t anything ALIVE in there?

A head appeared hovering over the top of the pillow wall, Dean could only see it because Castiel’s hair was darker than the rest of the world around him.

“Cas?”

“I don’t know why you’re still afraid. It’s unlikely that the future Zechariah exposed you to will be what actually occurs. Now that you’ve seen it you’ll actively seek out pathways that lead you in a different direction. That should comfort you.”

All he can see is that scruffy face and dull eyes, the hopelessness, the madness and despair in his smile. How Cas had known and gone along anyway. Willingly walked to his death without objection because Dean had asked him to.

_He would… Even now, if I asked him to lay down on the wire, he would._

Castiel’s hand was warm, fitted itself awkwardly against the side of Dean’s head and sat there like a toad on a log.

After a minute of it Dean let out a sigh and pushed the hand away; “Just—“ A sigh, “You don’t get it.”

“Would sex help?”

Dean thought maybe Castiel was obsessed with the idea of sex. Maybe his body was just so unimaginably horny and he didn’t have the vaguest idea on what to do about it, but then something—some nagging little itch, like a mosquito bite in his mind finally found words.

“Cas, why do you want to do that?”

“Because you’re frightened and upset and before, you said it would help.”

Dean shakes his head, tries to keep the rest of himself from shaking; “It won’t—It won’t help.”

“You said—“

“I was wrong…” His throat feels tight and he coughs as quietly as he can into his fist to clear it; “I was wrong—I’m upset and right now it wouldn’t help. It’d just make it worse.”

“Okay,” And Castiel lies down again without arguing.

Dean is quiet for a long time, feels his heart beating, feels itchy and cut loose from his strings. Wild and floating free—He pulls the top most pillows off the wall and tosses them into the floor, finds Castiel lying there looking at the ceiling. “Cas?”

“Yes, Dean?” He turns his head, the very corner of his mouth is cocked up.

His hands feel sweaty, he rubs them on the quilt. “Can—can I touch you?” He wets his lips; “Yanno, totally platonic touching, I mean.”

Castiel’s brows pull down.

Dean inhales and it comes out shaking; “I just wanna know you’re there… I’m—I’m freaking out a little bit and I just need to know you’re real.”

He’s seen realization sweep across Castiel’s features before, this is more subtle, the crease between his brows melts and the confusion in his gaze transforms to understanding. He moves slowly, rolls onto his side and reaches across the gap where the upper half of the wall had been. Dean meets him half way, feels the little callouses on borrowed palms as well as the warm wash of Castiel’s ethereal hands settling over him.

Castiel can feel it, a strange sense of comfort that overtakes Dean just at the simple touch of their hands. Reaches forward with his own and cards them through the soft edges of Dean’s energy. The connection between graces is instantaneous and stronger than it ever has been. Castiel can almost hear the hum and song of heaven through it—feels lulled and calm in a way he hasn’t since his expulsion.

Dean talks, whispers that he knows it’s stupid but since he saw it—since he encountered it, didn’t that make what he’d seen real? Didn’t that mean the versions of himself and Castiel he had seen were real people? But the flux of his emotions under it say more than he can.

Dean craves this for more than momentary reaffirmation of physical contact. More than the comfort of Castiel’s presence. Touch—gentle and given freely does something to him—It—Castiel feels it happen and doesn’t have words to explain what it is.

Dean’s grace isn’t the only thing reaching out in that moment. The longer they remain like this, the longer Castiel lets him cling and just—just TOUCHES, the more Dean’s very soul reaches into it, finds the edges of Castiel’s grace and connects.

The feeling—

The FEELING of it.

It’s nothing like the brief moment he had touched Dean’s soul in Bobby’s library. There is no pain in his grace reaching out and making contact with Dean’s soul now. It feels raw and new and unbelievably intense in a way that had been all rushing energy and struggle before.

Dean doesn’t try to pull away from it—if anything, he sinks in more deeply. Slips farther into rest and sleep and peace and—

Castiel feels the wall around his own hidden memories again. Feels something fighting to break free of it. Something YEARNING for acknowledgement—So, Castiel finds the barrier and, and gives an experimental tug. Like when Sputnik comes to him with her towel and wants to play. Curious to see if he knows what to do.

What’s on the other side fights all the harder and Castiel can almost see the shape of it like hands reaching for him—Can feel heat and urgency and the cold damp of the earth he—

_There are broken pieces in his hands, pieces that HURT and cry out at the violation and pain. Pieces that should never have been broken from their whole—_

_Please—PLEASE!_

_It’s OK—_

_Grace shudders—his hands—what?_

_Blood—Grace blood…_

_No. No, please—_

**_Oh, Father!_ **

“Cas—Hey—Cas, come on, wake up—“

There is a hand on his vessel. Pushing back through his hair—

Castiel can feel it. The body follows the motion, leans into it searching for more.

Dean makes a low humming noise; “Like a damn cat— Come on, Cas, wake up. You alright?”

Castiel doesn’t realize his vessel’s eyes are closed until they open and he finds himself staring up at Dean’s face. The lamp is on and Dean still looks like he hasn’t slept.

“I thought you said you didn’t sleep?”

“I don’t,” His vessel’s voice is slurred.

“Well, you were doing a good job of it—Then you started with the nightmare dance.”

“I don’t know how to dance—“

“Okay—Well, what were you dreaming about?”

“I don’t dream.”

“Sure,” Dean’s hand was still in his hair. “Who’s Naomi?”

Something sour rushes through Castiel’s core; “I don’t know.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

Dean hummed, “Maybe Jimmy? Can he dream while you’re in charge like this?”

“I don’t know.”

Another hum, brows pulled down in concern; “You’re shaking.”

Castiel lifted a hand and stared at it, then realized Dean wasn’t talking about his vessel and put it down again. “My grace is recharging, I don’t know why I would have dreamt.”

“I can get into your memories, maybe—I think I slept with a woman named Naomi once, ‘bout eight years ago? Blonde, nice rack?” He grinned, but there was very little humor behind it.

Castiel shifted closer, pressed himself in tight to his vessel and sank down, let his senses be dulled by those of the body until the pass of Dean’s fingertips across his scalp tingled, and the unease in his core began to fade. It was only then that he realized he’d been gripping Dean’s other hand tightly.

Dean shifted closer, until their bodies had squashed the remaining pillows between them and Castiel’s feet butted against Dean’s under the blankets.

“Dean?”

He grunted tiredly.

“Why are you touching my hair?”

“’sposed to be comforting.”

“Is that why Ellen does it to you?”

“Uh-huh… want me ‘stop?”

“No… Is all touch meant to be comforting?”

“When you want to be touched… If you don’t, it’s bad,” Dean sounded half asleep, speech slurred body lax. His hand moving seemingly of its own accord.

“Do you want to be?”

He grunted and his eyebrows twitched upward.

It was strange feeling Dean’s hair through his vessel. Soft, still a little damp in places, crimped where he’d been lying on it. The texture was smooth, a little less so where it curled behind his ears. The skin at the back of his neck was cool, soft—firm at the back of his shoulders. Castiel could feel the stack of his ribs through his shirt, could feel where the muscle had thinned and lost tone. Could feel the passage of Dean’s medication through his system in the easing tension of his body and the slowing of his breath toward sleep. Slow and gentle, the beat of his heart a rhythm behind it—Boomboom… boomboom… boomboom—

When Dean’s hands stopped moving Castiel’s did too and he lie there for a long while, feeling the weight of everything DEAN against him. Little flickers of thought as he began to dream, the prod of his grace as it shifted and moved with his imaginings. Castiel slipped—followed them completely by accident and found himself in a field behind Bobby Singer’s garage with much younger Sam and Dean—found his form changed into a child as well and forgot the tension, the fear and pain that had plagued his own brief dream.

This Dean laughed and called out as meteors fell, explained to Sam and this young human vision of Castiel about the earth traveling through a great big cloud of rocks and ice—that his teacher had explained it to them and shown them pictures.

Young Dean began singing loudly and wagging his feet in the air as the meteor shower picked up speed. Something about ‘Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket. Save it for a rainy day!’

Not far off Bobby chuckled where the memory/dream version of him had perched himself on an old lawn chair under a tree with a few cans of beer. “Don’t you boys think you’ve stayed up late enough?

“Aw, five more minutes!”

“Yeah! Five more minnuss!” Sam shrieked.

Another gruff laugh; “Five more minutes.”

Dean cheered and flipped backward, ass over teakettle to kneel in the grass, he crawled forward and bent over Castiel with a curious expression on his face. “Whassat?”

Castiel looked down at himself and saw something sparkling on his chest.

“Didjoo catch a star?”

Young Dean smiled wide; “I got one, wanna see?” And he pushed his little hand into his chest, like he was reaching into a mud puddle after an escaped frog and pulled out—

_HOTHOT **HOT!**_

Castiel woke. Eyes sprang open and there it was.

Dean had pulled him in close and was snoring softly into the top of his head. There was a singular BURNING point between them and without conscious thought Castiel shoved Dean back.

Dean barked out in fright, woken so suddenly from his dream, he sprang upright swinging his arms and reaching for the knife he kept under his pillow. “What the FUCK!”

Castiel released a noise. Low and urgent and entirely human in nature, shook himself and yanked his grace to the surface again. He felt a strange tingle along his edges and his hand came out, dumb and heavy fingers wrapped around the little light blazing under Dean’s shirt and PULLED.

Dean followed, cord still around his neck, eyes wide when he realized what was happening. “Son of a BITCH!” He ducked his head and twisted hard backward and to the left. The cord slid easily over his head and off, Castiel thought, vaguely, that Sputnik did the same thing slipping out of her collar.

Castiel went for the door with little care to the state of his vessel or Dean’s body. Sputnik yapped excitedly and danced around his feet but stayed clear as they stumbled past.

Dean cursed bitterly, toes curled into the soles of his feet because the concrete landing outside their door was absolutely freezing and until a moment ago he had been warm and toasty in a not-too-uncomfortable bed.

Castiel darted from one end of the landing to the other, grace BLAZING out from him in all directions, amulet clutched in his fist searching. The streetlight burned too bright, the lights outside each room as he passed turned on and faded out as he went.

Dean grabbed his shoulders but was shrugged off again and again. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think clearly, his whole world had rocked sharply on its axis. All he could hear in his head was Castiel’s voice and the angry bees hum of his grace. _It burns hot in the presence of God. It burns HOT in the presence of GOD!_ “Did you get Him? Cas—CAS! Did you SEE HIM!”

Castiel scurried the length of the landing again, Dean at his side, both shivering slightly in the early morning chill, parading around in nothing but their underwear and t-shirts.

“Cas—where is He? He was here! He was HERE! Where IS He! Did you see Him? Did you SEE HIM!””

Castiel’s eyes were too wide, too bright, filled with something close to agony. “No,” He shoved his hands through his hair and his whole form—his ENTIERTY—sagged in defeat. “No.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

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	38. Chapter 38

0-0-0

They left the motel quickly. Castiel had time to pull his jeans back on before Dean shoved Sputnik into his arms and pushed him out the door.

As much grace as Cas had been throwing around, they only had minutes before angels swarmed the area.

Dean drove hunched over the wheel, jeans still unbuttoned and unzipped, boots untied. He muttered ‘Fuck’ under his breath like a mantra, headed east and only slowed down when Castiel called his name for the fifth time and said they were safe.

Dean pulled off a few minutes later, parked in a graveled wide place leading down some dirt road or another, probably to a collection of farms if the fields meant anything. He was shaking, wrapped an arm around his stomach and sat there with his forehead pressed against the wheel for a few seconds.

Sputnik whined, wriggled out of Castiel’s arms and lapped worriedly at Dean’s elbow—He would blame her for it, but in all truth it was a multitude of factors. The anxiety, the fact he hadn’t eaten anything more than old protein bars in what to him had been seventy-four hours.

Castiel watched, because he didn’t know enough about subtle human social conventions not to, just gripped Sputnik’s collar and tilted his head as Dean popped open his door, leaned out over the ditch and coughed up strings of yellow bile.

He drove significantly slower after that, pulled off at a Gas ‘n’ Sip to fill up the tank and disappeared into the bathroom for a while.

Castiel paraded Sputnik around the grass near the rear door and when he came back found Dean already behind the wheel wearing sunglasses and smelling like cheap toothpaste and discomfort. The skin around his mouth was pale and sweat dotted his forehead.

He didn’t speak when Castiel said his name. Another hour on the road, over the New York State line and Dean still hadn’t said a word.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel combed his fingers through Sputnik’s ruff, scratched until one of her back feet wagged in pleasure. “If I hadn’t fallen asleep I would have felt His presence sooner.”

Dean let out a sigh and propped his temple on the heel of his hand. “It’s not your fault,” His voice sounded rough, like he’d been scratching the back of his throat again. “An’ I’m not mad about that…”

“What else can you be angry about?”

“I’m mad at myself, OK? Just—just forget it.”

“I don’t understand—“

Dean ground his teeth and cranked his window down, Sputnik’s head popped up and she waddled across the seat, tried to wedge herself between Dean’s chest and the steering wheel. He pushed her back and let out an explosive sounding cough he tried to smother into his fist.

“Dean?”

“Can we not talk about this?”

Castiel drew the dog back into his lap and opened his own window so she could stick her face into the breeze. “Then what should we talk about?”

“I don’t know, just not God, OK?”

Castiel faced forward for an impressive three seconds then turned again; “You lied to Sam.”

“What? No I didn’t.”

“You told him you were going to eat this morning and you didn’t.”

“I was a little preoccupied running away from angels that want to make me Michael’s prom dress.”

“We’re safe now.”

“I’ll eat when we get to Syracuse.”

“You won’t last that long.”

“What?” Dean wrinkled his nose; “I’m fine—“

“Your blood sugar isn’t. You’re dehydrated and your blood sugar is dropping.”

He shook his head, “Dude, I’m not diabetic—“

“The grace I gave you can only do so much to keep your body going. Dean, you need to eat.”

He faced forward and gripped the steering wheel tightly, ground his teeth so hard they hurt, didn’t say a word for thirty minutes.

“Dean?”

“Dean. There is a restaurant ahead on your left, we should stop.”

“Why do you suddenly care about it so much, huh? We’ve been out here for almost three weeks now and you haven’t said a damn thing about it. Now suddenly you’re obsessed. I’m FINE, Cas. I don’t need you to hold my hand with this, it’s my problem, I’ll deal with it. I don’t need your pity!”

“Pity?” Castiel’s brow wrinkled; “You think my silence was apathy?”

“I think you need to lay off and mind your own damned business like you’ve been doing this whole time.”

The angel bristled. “Stop the car.”

Dean couldn’t have denied him if he’d wanted to, it was like Castiel reached over with his ethereal hands, grabbed Dean’s and MADE him pull over. Right there on the exit twelve ramp like a couple of jackasses.

Dean glared at him, PUSHED forward and felt Castiel bat his grace away like a gnat.

“You believe I’ve sat here beside you day after day and watched you flagellate yourself for something that wasn’t your fault because I’m indifferent?” He seemed to expand himself threateningly and LOOM over Dean even though he hadn’t moved an inch;

Dean tried to put the Impala into gear and pull back onto the road but with a single twitch of his brows Castiel killed the engine, like he’d sucked all the power right out of the battery. The starter wouldn’t even click.

“Fix it.”

Castiel’s face scrunched petulantly.

“Cas, fix the car.”

“You’re scared.”

Dean grinned; “No, right now I’m pissed the hell off.”

“Why?”

“You _broke_ my car, that’s why—“

“You’re evading the subject.”

“Because, it’s pointless! You’ve done NOTHING, you’ve said NOTHING about what I do or don’t eat since we left Syracuse, and now all the sudden you care? Bull-SHIT. I don’t need your fucking pity, Cas. You can drop the touchy-feely act, I’m not buying it… Grace didn’t cause this, you could have fixed it any time and I wouldn’t be hacking my guts up like this every goddamn day, but you didn’t. So, fine. Whatever, I’ll deal with it on my own, but don’t you dare pretend like you care NOW. Not now, you had the chance and you blew it.”

“Do you truly hate yourself so much that you can’t conceive of someone actually caring for you and caring what happens to you?” His eyes narrowed, “The very idea of it seems preposterous to you, doesn’t it. You’re confronted with the possibility and you lash out like an animal.”

“Great, now I’m an animal—“

And something extraordinary happened.

Castiel’s face became dark and thunderous, and his hands lashed out.

Dean expected to be hit but instead those strong as steel nimble fingers tangled in his hair and yanked him down. Just an instant before his brow crashed into Castiel’s everything froze and thoughtsimagesmemories forced themselves into his head. There was so much sadness, fear and desperation. Such a NEED that Dean felt short of breath.

He saw himself from across the bench of the Impala, weary and sick looking, saw himself hunched over motel room toilets bringing up what he’d eaten barely an hour before. He saw the misery and HATRED in his own face every time his eyes hit a reflective surface. The disgust. Then there had been something else, something hovering just out of reach. Like he was floating over the ocean staring down at it and something dark was moving around below the surface. It was some nebulous energy shaped like hands reaching out in desperation, Castiel let him become aware of it then pulled him violently away.

Dean saw himself sleeping, in the midst of a nightmare, knees pulled to his chest, hands tangled in his own hair… He felt Castiel reaching out, making Contact and brushing the fears away, soothing the phantom hurts, forcing the demons back into the past.

Castiel was still gripping his hair when he shook himself free of it all, he still had their brows pressed tightly together and resigned look in his denim blue eyes.

Dean turned away from him, pressed his fist to his mouth and tried not to shake.

Castiel’s voice was calm, low and hushed, private; “I said nothing because I don’t know what to say, Dean. I don’t understand what you’re feeling and the harder I try to make myself understand the more complicated it becomes. I want to take this from you, and I can’t. I know I can’t, and I still want nothing more than to relieve you of it. It’s the single most frustrating emotion I’ve experienced as of yet. But still, I try, even though I know it’s futile… I’ve recited every ritual I know and created a few just for this purpose without result. I want you free from this, but there isn’t anything I can do or say to save you from yourself, and it hurts in a way I didn’t know it was possible to hurt.”

Dean felt heat rise to his face and a cold weight settled into his chest. He wanted to swallow, to try and draw some kind of moisture into his mouth but he couldn’t, there was a big LUMP in there and it was intent on burning him alive from the inside out. His heart beat too quickly and he couldn’t draw a full breath. “Cas—“

“I have never, in all my millennia of existence, encountered a creature as stubborn, faithless, and damnably self-effacing as you… I want to save you from this, but I can’t.”

Dean’s mouth flapped but no sound came out, he wasn’t ruling out the possibility that Castiel had stolen his voice simply so he wouldn’t be able to interrupt.

“I am _not_ indifferent. I may not understand why you can’t eat, but it’s obvious that you can’t and until I do understand, until I know how to help you I will remain silent, because your awareness of my failure hurts more than not trying at all.”

Dean sucked in a deep breath and forced himself to breathe. He couldn’t look at the angel because it was the first time he’d heard someone else say what has been going through his head and it felt like a weight had been suddenly removed. He felt light headed, almost on the verge of fainting, but he swallowed it down, forced himself to wait until the sensation passed.

“Dean—“

He held his hand up between them, fingers splayed, palm down and just left it there while he breathed so Castiel knew he had something to say. He curled his fingers into his palm and rested it on the seat between them; “When I can’t do it, I just can’t… There are good days, days when I’m fine. I can eat, no problem— and then there are days where I just want to claw my guts out because I can’t stand the thought of it, OK? I don’t know what kind of day it’s gonna be when I wake up and I just—I hate the days I can’t do it. I hate it—I hate myself when I can’t do it because I shouldn’t be so fuckin’ weak but I can’t control it, it’s still there right now, like it’s alive or something. And no matter how hard I fight it, I still end up puking my guts up,” He spoke more to the speedometer than to Castiel, “It’s humiliating. And Sam—“ He knocked his fist against the seat; “He LOOKS at me, all of ‘em LOOK at me like I’m just the world’s biggest fuckup—“ His throat closed and he fought to get air into his lungs, fought to keep his eyes dry and the burn out of his sinuses; “’You tried’ they said, ‘you tried’. Yeah, well try never DID anything,” He curled his nails into his palm and squeezed until blood welled up like gory little sickles in his skin; “I’ll have one maybe two good days and they relax, everything relaxes, it’s easier and I can calm down— then one day I can’t and it’s back to Dean the Fuckup—“

“You’re not a fuckup.”

He snorted, found the idea of an angel cursing novel, and scrubbed his face dry on his sleeve. “No?”

“No… You’re unwell and you’re fighting every day for normality. You wake up every morning and endure the same struggles day after day with little to no complaint. You’re tireless. I find it to be one of your more admirable traits.”

Dean shook his head, let out a derisive sounding huff of laughter; “I’m not tireless… I-I feel exhausted. I’m just so tired, Cas… I’m tired of everything,” He swiped the sting from his eyes and blinked rapidly at the ceiling liner; “I just want everyone stop. Just shut up and—“ He hiccupped loudly, snarled and punched the steering wheel. Covered his face and slouched low in his seat like he just wanted to disappear, disintegrate and just blast away into nothing. The words built up in his throat like a log jam, but he couldn’t say them, couldn’t verbalize it and make it real, so he thought them, pushed it toward Cas like some people push banking contracts across tabletops. ‘Here it is! The whole package,’ it says. ‘Take it or leave it, but here it is.’

**I want them to shut up—** _don’tsayanythingdon’tacknowledgeitjustignoreitignoremepleasedon’tlookatme_ **— I don’t like being stared at. I don’t like being the center of attention—** _drawingattentiontoyourselfwillgetyoukillednoticedthey’llcallCPSthey’lltakeyouawaythebadmanwillgetyouthedemonswillgetyoubadbadbadstayquietandsmalldon’tletthemseeyoudon’tseethemkeepyoureyesontheroadyourhandsuponthewheelkeepyourselftoyourselfkeepyourbedrolldrycauseyou’vegotnoplacetofallwhenyou’reback’stothewall_ **— This just makes me standout, makes them LOOK and SEE and then they want to help and I can’t take it—**

_John’s face, he’s young and there are tears in his eyes. Dean is six, he’s just seen his father shoot a man. “He was a bad man. This is what you do. You kill the monsters. You get them before they get you because nobody’s going to help you in this life, son. They don’t want to hear your excuses, don’t want to know you. They’ll only help you if they get something out of it. Nobody cares that you’re broken. They’ll just take away what good you’ve got and move on to the next poor kid who don’t know how to defend himself… So this is what you do. You stop your damn cryin’ and you pick up that gun and you blow those evil fuckers to kingdom come before they hurt someone else. You don’t stop, you never stop… You keep your family safe and you do what you have to do, even if it’s awful, you understand me?”—_

**I just want to be OK again and I’m not. I don’t know if I can be OK again.**

Dean chewed the inside of his lip, had his right hand curled, nails pressed into the scar on his left bicep, has his left hand over his mouth, body turned into the car door. It looked like a painful position, almost as if he’d barely stopped himself from throwing open the door and running away. He lifted his face long enough to speak, voice wasted and thin like sand dunes shifting; “I didn’t lie to him, Cas. Not about this… I’ll try, but you can’t be mad at me if I can’t. You can’t blame me if I can’t, ‘cause it’s not my fault.”

There was an urge in Castiel’s core, a sudden unfathomable NEED to reach out and touch but Dean had drawn in on himself again. Pulled his chin down in shame and hunched forward defensively. He was like a cornered animal, coiled tight in refusal of Castiel’s presence even if he didn’t know the proper etiquette for expressing one’s self with their mannerisms the basics were there, an instinct. Castiel curled his hand loosely and put it on the seat between them. He thought it was a strange kind of gesture. Closed hands meant refusal, but reaching out was an acceptance. “It isn’t your fault… I won’t be angry. Sad that you couldn’t— but not angry.”

Dean looked at him, had his nose wrinkled up as if he may snap. Kind of like how Sputnik rolled her lips back threateningly but doesn’t growl or snarl. Just a showing of teeth, a warning. His eyes flicked from Castiel’s vessel’s hand to his face and back and his body seemed to unwind, spool out like line from a reel.

“I’m not holdin’ your hand. Just ‘cause I’m talking doesn’t mean I wanna get all touchy-feely.”

“It’s meant for comfort. If you don’t want it I understand,” He pulled his hand back, left it on the seat beside his hip as an open invitation without the threat of close proximity.

Dean watched it, sat there and worked his jaw back and forth, gave a huff that sounded disgusted but packed no actual malice. He gave the key an experimental turn and seemed to relax all the more when the engine turned over. He drove silently for a few minutes, maneuvered the car through traffic and into the restaurant parking lot. He paused before he turned off the engine, just sat there staring straight ahead like he didn’t know whether or not he actually wanted to be there. Then his hand slid off the key, tapped out a hectic rhythm on his knee and crept onto the seat at his hip. He looked away, kind of like a kid sneaking their hand into a cookie jar under the logic that if they don’t see what they’re doing they’re not really doing it. Slowly his hand uncurled from its fist and his palm turned up.

There aren’t any words shared between them, Castiel thought it was somehow fitting. Silence, actions have always seemed to mean more to Dean than words and he pressed his palm into Dean’s.

0-0-0

Sam was not in his room when they arrived.

There was evidence that he was here earlier, the bed rail was down and the sheets were mussed. There was a pitcher of melting ice on the bedside table and whoever was with him that afternoon had left their book in the stiff reclining chair by the bed.

The nurse at the desk in the hall is younger, mid-twenties with short brown hair and a divot in her left eyebrow that suggests she wears a hoop in it when she’s off duty. Her nametag says Kailee.

“Are you friend or family member?”

“Family,” Dean didn’t expand on it.

Kailee smiled and tilted her head, flirts just a little too hard; “Well, I can see the resemblance… He’s at Physical Therapy until three. There’s a seating area down the hall where you can wait if you want.”

The ‘seating area’ was a three seat bench of uncomfortably hard cushions on a wooden frame shoved into a little alcove to the left of the elevators. There were plastic racks of outdated magazines stuck to the wall on either side of the bench and Dean snagged one as he passed, it had a picture of some pasta dish with sausage on the front slathered in tomatoes and Parmesan cheese. He didn’t even blink when Sputnik settled down at his heel with her little feet on the toe of his boot, prim and somehow regal in the way she had her ears perked and her nose in the air, dark eyes on the elevator doors.

Castiel took the seat beside him—a little too close for comfort but Dean ignored it, he’d been hovering since that morning, fingering the amulet in his pocket. Dean was half tempted to demand its return but if God was still in the area Cas would feel it sooner than he would and with something this important, seconds could make all the difference.

The elevator dinged twice and spewed its contents of humanity into the hallway, Sam wasn’t among them so Dean focused on his magazine again.

A doctor in a tie-dyed lab coat walked up about half an hour later. He was tapping a clipboard against his thigh. It was completely covered in brightly colored stickers. He gave Dean a smile and motioned to Sputnik. “Corgi, right?”

Dean nodded.

“Female?”

“Yeah, actually.”

The doctor chuckled; “Corgis make great service animals… Ever thought of breeding her?”

Dean blinked, felt mildly uncomfortable with the prospect of whoring out the dog. “Uh—“

“I only mention it because most of the Corgis I’ve seen around are brown and tan. She’s the first blonde I’ve seen in a long time.”

“Uh—“

Castiel looked down at her; “Her mother is ‘Victoria’s Georgia Blue Queen’ and her father was ‘Butcher’s Atlas Promenade the Third’.”

The doctor’s eyebrows went up. “Atlas Promenade?” He gave a low whistle; “That’s quite a pedigree… And she’s in Service? You haven’t put her in any shows?”

“No, she’s not registered. She’s happy as she is.”

“You’re not missing anything, my wife and I registered our Corgi Calcifer when we got him, lots of fuss for a piece of paper, let me tell you. What’s her name?”

Dean cleared his throat and spoke carefully, crossed one leg over the other as if he knew what they were talking about; “Sun Princess Ursula Tiny Nose I’ll Killya… We call her Sputnik.”

She tilted her chin up and hooked her crooked lower tooth over her lip, seemed to nod with the tilt of her head, greeting the peasant doctor man with an air of fuzzy preeminence.

The doctor chuckled, “It’s fitting!” He waved as the elevator doors opened to admit him.

Dean waited until they were alone again before he turned to Castiel; “Sputs is a show dog?”

“Her mother and father were.”

“You gave me a show dog?”

“Her mother’s human cut her off from the litter because she was born small. She isn’t registered with any comity or club for selectively bred dogs and is not recognized by them as a true descendent of her parents because she didn’t fit into the parameters of ‘acceptable’ when she was born.”

“That’s dumb,” He looked down at her, met her warm brown gaze and bent to scratch her head; “Don’t need those sons’uh’bitches anyway.”

She thumped her tail in agreement.

The elevator whirred past on its way upstairs, and a moment later came down with a shrill DING!

Dean had seen Sam in a wheelchair before. Sam had been sixteen at the time, trashed his knee running from a werewolf in the back woods of Tennessee. He’d been on crutches for a month after. It felt almost the same seeing him come off the elevator with Ellen pushing him along. The only thing different was how Sam was sitting. You could tell, Dean didn’t know how, but you could tell where the tension in his brother’s chest and stomach stopped.

He was wearing a t-shirt, a big black thing with the New York skyline screened on the front and a pair of track pants with buttons up both sides. There were pillows stuffed into the chair with him, one on each side and an oxygen cannula under his nose.

It hurt, knowing that this was Sam’s reality, it hurt because Dean still blamed himself for it.

Sputnik made a low barking noise and darted forward, pranced in counterclockwise circles with her tail going a mile a minute. Jumped up and put her paws on Sam’s knee and nuzzled into his hand when he reached out to her with a huff of quiet laughter, caught her face and smashed up all the fat and fur until she couldn’t keep her eyes open and her tongue popped out. Like one of those rubber squeeze toys.

Ellen swatted the back of his head; “She can’t breathe, stop it.”

“She’s fine,” Sam released her, scratched is nails through her fur and babbled at her like an infant.

Dean didn’t know he was standing until Ellen gripped his arms and pulled him down into a hug. “You’re nothin’ but skin and bones—“

Castiel got the same treatment, though he didn’t hug back, just stood there staring into the ether perplexed.

“Where are Bobby and Jo?”

Ellen checked her watch; “Checking out that Cat thing in New Jersey. I’m not exactly a cat person, but there’s something wrong about a mass feline suicide on the turnpike.”

Dean grunted, rubbed under his nose compulsively and when Sam looked up Dean made himself look back. “How you holdin’ up?”

Sam pushed himself upright and flexed his hands on the armrests of his chair; “Incisions looking good, minimal scarring, they want me here for at least two more weeks until I can get myself in and out of bed and stuff…” He took a second to breathe; “Looking like theoxygen’s gonna be a permanent fixture… And I never thought I’d say this, but I’d kill for a cheeseburger right about now.”

Dean looked at his feet, grinned.

“What about you?”

“I, uhm—“ He could feel Castiel’s gaze, a fleeting thing, like the brush of a moth’s wings in the dark. Ellen stared at him and there was a lead weight in Dean’s gut. “I’ve been better.”

Sam looked concerned, as if he hadn’t been expecting Dean to say anything other than ‘I’m fine’ and the fact that he did scared him.

“But I’ve been worse.”

“Yeah,” Sam nodded, looked Dean up and down and decided there wa something different, something less cramped about him. “Yeah, you have.”

0-0-0

They didn’t stay long. It wasn’t practical with angels breathing down their necks.

Sam said he was OK, he’s ‘Dealing’ he claimed to be steadfast in his refusal to say ‘yes’ to the devil but Dean was still worried. Couldn’t help but remember the coldness in Lucifer’s expression through Sam’s eyes.

Sam offered his advice on how to keep Zechariah from finding them and was adamant that Dean learn to lucid dream.

“It’s important,” he said, but it was kind of hard to take him seriously when Dean was holding up his weight so Ellen could help get him back into the bed without bothering the nurse. No wrinkles in his clothes or the sheets, they could cause bedsores. Fucking bedsores.

It wasn’t something Dean wanted to think about, even less so when he had to physically help his brother get into bed. It—it messed with him a little bit and he remembered Cold Oak, the slack, lifeless weight of Sam’s body, the damp chill of that abandoned house, putting him down on the stained, sagging bed and sitting there watching his skin go gray and the blood pool in his back, drip steadily like melting jello out of the wound until it had clotted too much to move—the smell after two days—

By the time Sam had been situated Dean was shaking and it wasn’t entirely from fatigue.

There were short clipped conversations, Dean gave a colorless overview of his time in the future, didn’t mention what he’d heard about Ellen, Jo and Bobby. Didn’t think he could talk about it even if he was asked directly.

By six that evening they were headed south and Dean felt like he had a hole in his chest. His thoughts were circling and nothing made sense. He put his hand out on the seat simply because he needed some kind of anchor, expected Sputnik to nose her way under his hand. Instead Castiel’s fingers found his again. It was a simple, effortless connection, a low hum in his veins below the music on the radio.

He felt self-conscious about it, watched and judged every time a car passed them. Felt like it was written on his face when they stopped for gas, ducked his head and tried not to make eye contact with anyone around him. They stopped at a bar and Dean tried to round up some cash playing pool but his head wasn’t in the game, he got about two hundred and called it quits, can’t afford to make a stupid mistake.

He ate nachos. They stayed down.

Sputnik swallowed a cigarette butt in the parking lot and threw up on the back seat.

Dean cursed while he cleaned it up and threatened to put a muzzle on her.

Bobby called at about eight-thirty, asked if Dean was still in the area, he and Cas parked and wait by the state line and by ten Bobby and Jo were there. They shared what they’ve found about the suicidal cats. It wasn’t much.

“There’s demonic activity alright, but I’ve got no clue what they’re trying to prove making a bunch of feral cats jump under truck tires.”

Dean didn’t know, Castiel didn’t know, Jo looked like she wanted to cry. Apparently she was more of a cat person.

The four of them pulled up to an all-night diner in a no-name truck stop and Dean had coffee, black with a little sugar just for the added calories. It tasted burnt, but when Bobby shoved a paper bag in through his car window while they were saying goodbye an hour later he thought maybe it was worth it. Every little bit helps.

“What’s this?” He pulled open the bag and stared down at the contents with his brows scrunched.

“You and Sam used to gorge yourselves on that shit when you were kids. Every time you got sick you wanted moon pies and RC. You could be pukin’ your toenails up and this is what you wanted… I got no clue why, but it always seemed to bring you out of it,” There was something like hope in Bobby’s voice, and Dean thought maybe this was the old man’s way of trying to comfort him. Something nostalgic and… and—

Dean stared at the packaging, held it up and let the greenish lights of the truck stop sparkle against the cellophane. “I don’t remember that.”

Bobby snorted; “It’s the first thing you asked me for after you got your tonsils out. Couldn’t even talk but you wanted moon pies and RC.”

Dean was quiet after that, curious, glanced at the bag where he left it on the seat between himself and Castiel and felt like he was missing something.

Around four AM Castiel looked into the bag and asked why they were called moon pies, they don’t even look like the moon and Dean snorted, dug around in the bag and pulled one out. A passing car’s headlights glinted against the packaging and something itched in the back of his mind.

The chocolate was cracked and the cookie was crumbled along one side. Three layers with marshmallow in between. Dean knew what they tasted like but…

He ate it, held the bottle of soda between his knees and cracked off the cap with the bottle opener utility on his knife. It fizzled and burned a little with carbonation on the way down, flooded his mouth with the taste of sweet.

Why couldn’t he remember it?

They made it all the way to Pittsburgh before the lack of pain in his belly and his medication fully took hold. Castiel offered to drive before Dean took the hint and backed the Impala into a little copse of trees just out of sight of the highway. Sat there staring at his hands for a few minutes, with a dazed expression on his face.

Maybe it was the added energy of digesting all the food he’d eaten, maybe it was just simple exhaustion from driving for so long non-stop. Maybe it was a multitude of factors, Dean didn’t know. He opened the door and climbed out, stretched the kinks from his spine and gave the world a cursory glance before he popped the trunk. There was an old surplus blanket stuffed into the bottom of the hollow where the emergency bag usually stayed, it smelled like gun oil and faintly of car exhaust. Still had a few dried, crunchy brown leaves stuck on it from Union Kentucky. The night he’d spent in the barn staring at the ceiling, Anna not four feet away trying to comfort him even though he was about to give her up to the angels.

He climbed into the back seat and tried to find a comfortable position with his head pillowed on his arm. There wasn’t one. He tossed and turned and unnamed worries begin to build up until his insides started to cramp. Then there was a face, Castiel’s hand. The angel stared at him over the top of the front seat, curiosity and worry like a physical force, bright starlight blue eyes seeming to glow, color swirling around him like a storm cloud.

For a wavelength of celestial intent Castiel was damned ungraceful when he climbed over the seat. He stepped on Sputnik’s tail where she’d curled up on a towel in the foot well near Dean’s feet and she snapped at him, snarled like a thing possessed.

Castiel tripped trying to get his foot off of her and went down hard on top of Dean, all elbows and knees and sharp hipbones.

“Yanno, this isn’t what I had in mind—“ Dean wheezed, wriggled and tried to change position, somehow he wound up pressed against the back of the seat with his legs tangled in the angel’s borrowed ones, thin arms around his chest and a heartbeat under his ear. He held perfectly still because Castiel’s thigh was pushed up between his legs and if he moves he’s going to grind his balls into the angel’s hip and the angel’s dick against his stomach and—and minutes stretched out, he could feel Castiel’s grace cycling through him, a lull like the hushed sounds of ocean waves. The steady beat of Castiel’s borrowed heart.

Sputnik snored and cars passed on the highway. Dean was surprisingly warm considering it was chilly outside for late June.

He should feel anxious, he wasn’t in a hotel room, there was no barrier between himself and Castiel. There were no salt lines, no warding symbols. This was all so new, he’d never been in the back seat of this car with another person unless sex was involved since the very first time he had sex.

“What’s new?” Castiel’s voice rumbled through him, tingled along all his muscles.

He hadn’t even known he’d been talking. His brow scrunched; “How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Get me to talk when I don’t know I’m talkin’.”

“I don’t do anything. You just talk.”

He hummed a tune, couldn’t name it. Said he’s tired. His fingers found a wisp of a curl at the back of Castiel’s head and wrapped around it, felt the texture of it and tugged a little, curious and dumb.

Dean wasn’t aware of falling asleep, he wasn’t aware of dreaming, but what happened when he closed his eyes was out of his control and even when Castiel shook him a few minutes later he didn’t wake.

Dean was standing on a street corner across from a child. She stared at him with all this glowing smoke pouring out of her, smiled with her chipped teeth and scarred lips. She had three glass bottles of RC cola in one hand, fingers curled around the necks like brass knuckles, and the pocket of her jacket was bulging with moon pies.

The car came from nowhere, engine roaring and Dean saw the impact, saw her little body bend to the side unnaturally in a shower of molasses colored fluid and broken glass. Then she—the car, everything exploded—tore the very fabric of reality around her, and let DARKNESS pour in.

The memory bubbled up and he wouldn’t have been able to stop it even if he’d wanted to.

There can be no stopping it.

No hope of standing against it.

It simply IS, and Dean was lost to it.

_Hands in the darkness, light and burning. A strange face, thin and BRIGHTBURNINGPURE. Four arms and—and— and a voice like the echo of the earth’s very heartbeat. Low and timeless—his body wreathed in crucible fire and SHINING like the core of the sun. Nothing but brightness so white it can no longer be called white—_

_He feels himself yanked free—dangling like a torn scrap of meat between titanic fingers, carried up-upupup and away. The PUSH IN of the darkness and Dean feels himself drawn in close. Sheltered…_

_Dean Winchester is **Saved!**_

_It’s warm wherever he is. Warm and quiet and he huddles in on himself against it, hidden in the great arms that hold him. He remembers being very small and scared and someone holding him, how safe he had felt._

_This doesn’t feel safe, not really. He doesn’t think he’ll ever feel safe again, but it’s nice. It’s wonderful to feel MERCY. It has been so long he’s forgotten there is anything other than pain and fear and hurt and hatred. He cries in the face of it, clings and weeps because he doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve forgiveness, not after what he’s done…_

_But he wants it. He wants it so badly even if it hurts worse than anything._

_The world bleeds into focus and everything shimmers as if with summer heat. The night is illuminated by bodies, compressed down to the size of men to stay hidden, just shapes off which invisible flames arch into the night, curl around trees and grass and BURN with living urgency._

_They’re talking. Voices in every octave in sync and too immense to echo even as they whisper. The very sound of them shakes the molecules of the air. Dean can feel it in himself—moving through him and out again— He has no energy of his own, feels small and helpless like a feeble dying old dog—tattered and starved and pitiful. There are arms around him and his face is pressed into a chest. There’s a star glowing within this chest, it’s too bright to look at, but it burns through his eyelids. Everything is just too MUCH to have any color at all. Not even gray or silver, just light and the absence of it. There are faces though, some look almost monstrous, some seem featureless, just pale BURNING slates with brighter pinpricks for eyes._

_He feels like he could suddenly burst into flames at any moment from the sheer POWER of these things gathered around him. The damning, judgmental stares alone should turn him to ash and cinders. Dean draws his legs tighter together, trying to hide the ruin of himself but their gaze penetrates, there is no hiding from them, even as he impudently tries._

_Two shapes are crouched in the middle of the group, not far from where the one holding him is standing. Their arms are shoved deep into the ground beside a rather off center, rugged looking cross. The ground around them seethes with life. Worms and plants sprout and grow and wither and die and grow anew. The soil, once dry brown darkens into rich healthy blackness, it screams at him of purity. That if he put a seed there it would grow and grow right before his eyes._

_He wonders vaguely why they’re doing that, why they’re snuffing out the plants that try to grow there instead of letting them flourish. He watches purple and blue and white wildflowers sprouting blooming dying withering falling to dust and rising from the ashes._

_They speak again. Amongst Themselves and the wall of sound HURTS._

_He clings tighter even though what’s holding him feels like an exceedingly dense pocket of warm fog charged with lightning._

_There is urgency to the noise these creatures make and the two on the ground move back, stand and shrink a little, create a ring around the being holding Dean._

_Then there are hands._

_DISGUST HATRED!_

_Dean feels the emotions as if they’re his own—in some way they are because he feels the same things toward this—this OTHER that it feels toward him._

_He opens his mouth—NONONONONONONONONO!—and **screams.**_

_The trees and plants around them rock—some politely burst into flames. It’s like a shockwave—_

_Darkness spills out of him and that COLD hand slaps over his mouth, to hold the darkness in._

_The Voices rise into a solid barrier of sound that holds the darkness close— forces it back into him with great effort._

_All Dean can think about is the pain of having those COLD disgusting HATING hands on him and he can’t take it. Cries out with everything he has for it to stop. For someone to please, PLEASE—_

_“CAS! CAS, HELP ME! IT HURTS, CASTIEL! MAKE IT STOP!”_

_And EVERYTHING stops._

_The Universe._

**_Heaven stops._ **

_For a moment, everything stills and the cold hands jerk back in shock, surprise._

_Emotion surges through him from the being he’s held by. Surprise, disbelief, joy, curiosity… fear._

_The Voices start up again, quickly. Just two, Cold Hands and The Warm One… They’re shouting. The sound of it makes Dean feel like he’s going to explode and he clings tighter—SCREAMS and the barrier holding back the darkness within weakens and begins to fall. He can feel it there inside him, growing and growing and he knows if he lets it out it’s over. Everything will finally FINALLY stop._

_Cold Hands grows to impossible height, then falters and shrinks down again, lowers its eyes and The Warm One moves forward—SLIPS down and everything is dark—Dean feels a static charge going through him from the very earth and it’s only after he’s settling slowly into a cold broken shell that he realizes he’s being stuffed back into his mangled corpse and all he can think of are the bodies he and Sam used to dig up years ago—the STENCH of them. Putrescence. Damp—_

_He claws and WRITHES trying to break free. Doesn’t want to be stuck back in this body after forty years because he knows what’s left of it, can FEEL it. He can’t stand to think of himself rotting—He doesn’t want to be any more of a monster than he already is—Please PLEASE NO!_

_He’s scared._

_He’s **terrified…**_

_The Warm One is singing, soft sounds like music over a distance, other voices join in and a light glows from around Dean, from the ruin of the body he’s being pushed into._

_A hand settles on his shoulder, keeping him pinned down even as he reaches up, tries to settle back into the warmth because he can feel himself charging up—like a machine, like a bomb. He’s going to explode, he’s going to tear himself apart and take out everything around him and he’s so scared because it hurts so much and he just wants it to stop but it never will IT WILL NEVER STOP—_

_The face above his twists—fear rockets through him followed closely by realization and the being seems to unfold a third set of hands from the vicinity of its neck, plunges one deep into its chest, curls its fingers—and PULLS._

_It’s a small thing, about the size of a marble. Like a wisp of smoke, thin but glowing fiercely._

_Dean looks at it and remembers one spring between seven and nine. Dad had parked them in a town in Arizona and there had been this girl in the trailer park across the road from the hotel. Her name had been Allison, she’d been his age, maybe a year older. She had dirty blonde hair in a lopsided ponytail, wore red cowboy boots and a denim miniskirt with a cutoff t-shirt and one of her daddy’s old Army fatigue jackets with rolled up sleeves. She smoked cigarettes, Marlborough’s in the red pack she stole from her mom, don’t you tell no one, Dean, or I’ll punch you in the pecker! And everyday after school she would walk to the truck stop and steal moon pies and RC cola for the three of them. She told Dean that when she got her period she was gonna have a baby and get on the welfare so she could afford to leave this piece of shit town._

_The other kids liked to throw rocks at her and call her Trash or Witch and she would just grin at them from under her lashes like she thought it was funny and puff away. She didn’t talk about it, but Dean was observant for a kid and he knew her father was a drunk who slapped her around sometimes and her mother went Cab-Knocking every night at the truck stop down by the interstate. Usually came staggering back around dawn with her nose crusted in blow and greasy handprints on her hips. A roll of twenties stuffed in her bra._

_Allison had caught fireflies in the street with him and Sam at night, had stuck them in an old mayonnaise jar, took a long drag on her cigarette and filled the jar with smoke._

_Three days before John pulled them out of school Allison had been hit by drunk driver and left for dead in the ditch on the side of the highway; cigarettes, moon pies and broken RC bottles spilled around her like fucking angel wings. Dean didn’t even know if she’d lived or not._

_He sees that little WHISP of STUFF and thinks of Allison for the first time in decades. Thinks of the fireflies in the smoke filled mayonnaise jar and goes still for a moment, stares… Feels something tiny fighting back against the Darkness trying to blast him to bits and—_

_Then the hand pushes forward, flattens against his chest—holds him down—pins him like an insect into his body and the being above him speaks._

_Dean’s jaw drops open in shock and everything goes still. He feels heat pumping into his body as the being above him chants low in its many voices, strange syllables but Dean understands them and that in itself is probably more frightening than anything—_

**_“Father—Father, please let this work—“_ ** _Its glowing eyes close and the hand holding that shard presses IN; “ **Hear me!”** The Brightness bends close and whispers softly in those strange, harsh syllables, but in Dean’s mind he hears a low even voice, hushed and private, just for him— **“You’re alright… You are safe now. They can’t hurt you anymore…”**_

_A hand pushes through his hair, forms itself to his cheek and for an instant Dean imagines he can see features in the brightness above him._

**_“You’re OK… I’ve got you.”_ **

_There is a quick FLASHBURN of agony and Dean can’t move anymore. Is gasping for breath through the pain, trapped in a confined space, eyes open wide and filled with BRIGHTNESS—_

_There is a flow, a current arching through him and through the Being there with him. Thoughts and images and sensations—_

_All the things he’s ever felt about himself, all his hopes and dreams crushed. Lessons forced upon him when he was too young and tender to fully shoulder their weight. Choices no child should have to make—_

_Fear and doubt and worry, duty and questions like a physical weight._

_Dean sees sunlight break upon the craggy, incomplete surface of the planet for the first time. Feels the quaking of the earth as it splits and hisses and water bubbles up from its core. Flashes of lightning and storms rage and break upon the rocks. A hand sweeps over the face of the Earth. Gentle and soothing like a caress to a fevered brow and Dean knows that relief. FEELS IT with everything he is, stares up into an impossible brightness in the heart of a star he’s never seen before but aches for like a home he barely remembers and he weeps for the RELEIF._

_Dean feels it in his chest, this abrupt KNOWLEDGE of Who is bending over him—who is somehow INSIDE of him in a way that is no way sexual and the memories shove forward without his intent. EVERYTHING, all the longing and NEED and LOVE—_

_“Castiel?”_

The Being freezes, still joined with him—takes in everything he’s feeling, all the memories, emotions and uncertainties. It’s in that instant, when nothing of the two of them is hidden, that something changes. The Being’s eyes go slowly, impossibly wide, shocked AWED—

**_“Oh, Father!”_ **

_And color EXPLODES outward from the scar left in its chest where it had torn out part of itself and thrust it into Dean’s core. SURPRISEFEARUNCERTAINTYDESPERATION— **JOY** —_

_There is a thunderous noise from above them. Hands shove through the ground and grab the now vividly colorful entity bending over him and wrench it— HIM away. TEARS HIM and the Darkness free and leaves Dean cold and alone trapped in a hole in the ground. He breathes in deep franticALIVE and screams—a very human sounding scream. Weak and loud and pathetic in the confines of his box. Dean thrashes, ripsTEARS at the moldering sheet he’s tied up in, shreds it with his teeth and hands and beats his fists against the confines of his wooden prison until they are bloody and bruised._

_“CAS! NO! **CAS!”**_

_Hell is dim—THERE and PRESENT at the forefront of his mind but he could care less because he’s FOUND HIM! HE’S REAL! He KNOWS HIM!_

_“CAS!” His face is wet—he’s crying and he doesn’t care—“COME BACK! COME BACK! **GIVE HIM BACK!”**_

_And the earth SHAKES._

_BRIGHTNESS descends over him, HANDS! BURNINGMONSTROUS **HANDS** close over his head and press over his chest. _

_Dean shrieks and throws his fists against the Brightness. This unyielding hating THING so much larger and stronger than The Cold One, so much worse—_

_No—nonono PLEASE! PLEASE DON’T TAKE HIM FROM ME! PLEASE, OH PLEASE! I NEED HIM! DON’T TAKE HIM AWAY! HE’S MINE! NO-NO, DON’T!_

_It hurt, like a knife in his chest. Cold silver spikes driven through his eye sockets and into his brain. Acid dripped onto his brow from an impossible height, so he can watch and know he can’t escape it._

_Somehow this was worse. This was so much worse. Try as Alistair did to break the memories in Dean’s head he had warped and twisted them, but he had never been able to remove them entirely. Dean could still dream in Hell, could still find a modicum of escape—but this. This THING was taking them away! It was slashing through his head like liposuction or some shit. Lobotomizing him, sifting through his most private thoughts, picking and choosing like a fat tourist at a Las Vegas Buffett. Stuffing shrimp and lobster tails into their napkin lined pockets._

_Dean gripped with all his fingers to those cold murdering hands and scratched—clawed—but it didn’t change anything._

_The Thing grabbed memories TWISTED them out like teeth and closed them up behind a wall of BURNINGHURTBAD. It puts a hand to the wisp in Dean’s chest and Dean is certain he’s about to have it ripped away—have every last bit of that—he can’t even remember anymore, all he sees in his head is fireflies in smoky mayonnaise jars and a sense that it was important—so important he was crying over it… And the Thing PUSHES down hard against it—SMEARS it against his soul in a burning cold acid FLASH of dying flame until it’s barely visible, barely glowing, like a lightning bug crushed on a windshield. Flickering and abused._

_Dean grapples with the brightness, begs—No, NO! PLEASE NO! **PLEASE!** But then it’s all gone. It’s suddenly so DARK, no color, only the pressure of COLD HATING HANDS on him. They choke the breath from him even as he tries to curl up defensively, terrified of whatever this invisible THING is and then they’re gone as well, leaving him empty and broken. _

_They leave him—Everyone does. They always do… Everyone he cares about dies._

_The invisible thing abandons him with Hell and nothing bright and beautiful to cling to._

_He can only vaguely feel the spark in his chest, it throbs with him—screams as well—and goes suddenly silent… Cold. Snuffed out like a cigarette in the ditch. Not so much as a fizzle to mark its passing._

_Dean’s breath returns in a tearing gasp and his limbs bang against the confines of his prison. His voice when he tries to scream for help is thin—broken and bloody. He HURTS all over and nothing is good in the world._

He woke with a breath. A slow deep inhale and was instantly aware of his surroundings.

Castiel’s eyes were wide full of fear and the sunrise was pink behind him, just barely glowing through the trees and car windows.

Dean had one hand tangled in his own shirt front, the other thrown up over his head fighting with the tangle of blanket they’d been lying on.

He breathed, felt it shaking in his chest and became aware of the bite of Castiel’s fingertips against his shoulders, Sputnik whined loudly and there is an ache in Dean’s his throat, like he’d been crying or screaming or both.

The memory was raw, still smoking at the edges and Dean felt like his brain has been scrambled, just beat to hell and back.

The void in his mind though, was gone, FILLED and his thoughts were roaring.

He—he felt surprisingly calm, breathed in and out, couldn’t look away because Castiel—His color was bright—earth shattering. His eyes...

“I remember.”

Castiel’s brows pulled down; “I—“

Dean said it again, softer, felt exhausted and let himself slide back, just—just fade out like a flashlight with bad batteries.

“I remember. It’s you… Cas, my Cas… It’s you.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

 


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jessi, without you there would be no chapter.

0-0-0

Dean woke with sweat pooling at the small of his back, under his cheek and all up the side pressed into the Impala’s upholstery. It was hot in the car. More than hot— The back of his neck felt tight and burned and he could hear Sputnik panting and whining somewhere near his feet. Dean felt like he was being baked Hansel and Gretel style, and unfortunately he did know what that felt like. 

“Son of a bitch,” He lifted his head, felt his skin peeling itself off the seat and Castiel’s chest. He wasn’t surprised to see where they had been pressed together was wet. 

Castiel’s face was scrunched in what looked like minor discomfort considering it was over a hundred degrees in the car. He rather unsuccessfully disentangled himself from Dean, which consisted of his hands burning into the skin of Dean’s waist when they slipped against his sweat saturated clothes and found flesh. 

Dean cursed again, breathless and writhed against the contact, found a door handle and popped it open—Air rushed in and Sputnik leapt out. 

Dean felt like his body was nothing but an amorphous lump of mucus and oily tissue. He oozed out of the car and staggered drunkenly a few paces to the nearest tree. Sat down against it with his chin tilted up and all his limbs flopped against the ground, spread eagle trying to find some kind of relief. He felt like he was drowning in the heat.

Castiel climbed out looking somewhat worse for wear. There was a Dean shaped damp patch all along his chest and side and his hair was plastered to his head. 

Dean stared at him, thought maybe that was as close to sex hair as he’d ever seen on Castiel and was suddenly and perfectly overwhelmed with the knowledge that no, he’d seen ACTUAL SEX hair on him before—And everything flooded back. 

He felt dizzy with it, felt himself sag bodily backward as if in a swoon and his vision tunneled out. 

Cas. It was CAS. C-A-S! 

His heart stuttered in its rhythm like an old 45 with a scratch. His face was surely melting. There was no way he could survive the heat of the outside world and what was suddenly burning in his face, neck, and chest. 

Castiel’s eyes were too blue and looking right at him and all Dean could think was that those eyes had seen him naked. Had gazed upon him with love, compassion and desire. Those hands had touched without an ounce of selfishness and those lips had kissed with such unrestrained need—

Dean’s head felt like it was full of angry bees; He’s touched me, it’s HIM. I let him SEE! 

He was no stranger to embarrassment. He was, however, unfamiliar with the practice of the ‘Morning After’ other than the awkward smiles and small talk, promises of phone calls and rendezvous at a later date that would never come. Dean hadn’t ever really been with someone long enough to reach the period of one’s romantic experience where the fact of one’s nocturnal activities cannot be denied and the knowledge that they can be repeated at any time for the foreseeable future was without contest.

It had been two years and two months since Dean was freed from the Djinn’s poison, he had woken up beside Castiel more than forty times since then, had seen him without underwear twice, but when he looked up into the angel’s borrowed face he was struck by the sudden heated tingle of embarrassment. Phantom hands smoothed up and down his sides, the weight of Cas’ body moved in his memory and Dean felt a hard throb of arousal pick up a beat low between his hips for the first time in what to him, has been decades. 

Castiel’s brows scrunched down and his expression, though flushed with the midday heat, seemed somehow unimpressed. 

Dean couldn’t look at him. 

Jesus Christ, he couldn’t even look at him!

A few yards away Sputnik snorted and hacked and kicked at the dirt, shaking her head in agitation. 

Castiel clenched his jaw.

Dean breathed out through pursed lips and hugged his knees to his chest. 

Well, shit. 

“You wouldn’t wake up.”

Dean glances at him again, feels the heat building higher in his face and looks away again.

“Why wouldn’t you wake up?”

He said it like it was Dean’s fault, like he’d chosen to stay in Dreamland just for spite. 

“Wasn’t really my choice,” He rubbed the sweat from his face, shoved his hair off his brow and resolved to get it cut, visibility of those scars be damned. How the hell did Sam put up with having so much hair, it was like a fucking sauna on his head!

Castiel didn’t look pleased. 

Dean’s eyes found him again, his cheeks went redder, and he looked quickly away. 

Castiel took half a step closer and bent forward a little; “Why is your skin changing color?”

Dean pressed his hands to his cheeks and glared up at him angrily for all of five seconds; “Shut up!” Then had to look away again. 

“You’re behaving strangely.” 

“No shit.”

Castiel’s shoulders sagged in exasperation and he looked away as if to center himself. Insufferable Winchesters made absolutely no sense some times. “We should leave.”

Dean said nothing.

“You’re staring at me but you heard nothing I’ve said.”

Dean didn’t look away this time, just followed him with his eyes. Every movement, every shift of muscle in his jaw, the jump of his pulse in the side of his neck. He seemed particularly fascinated with Castiel’s mouth although the words coming out of it may as well have been Swahili for all that Dean understood them.

Castiel could feel the hum of dilated capillaries as far south as Dean’s abdomen and a few more creeping up from below— His thoughts were muted, distant, but buzzing with energy. It was infectious and Castiel felt the excitement himself, shifted on his feet for want of something to do with it. He looked down at his shoes and up again, found Dean’s gaze locked on him still. He looked at Sputnik who’d found some roots to gnaw on and back, “You’re not having a seizure… Why are you staring at me?” 

Dean seemed to writhe under his skin, the beat of his heart was steadily increasing and every second that passed the ruddy tint to the skin of his face neck and ears crept down a little more.

Castiel glanced down at his own crotch and up again; “What can you possibly find arousing about this?” 

Dean’s eyes rolled skyward and he made an exasperated little tittering noise. He pulled his legs tighter together and drew his knees up to his chin. “You know just what to say, don’t you.”

“Was that sarcasm?”

“No, not at all.”

Castiel’s brow furrowed and his confusion couldn’t have been more evident unless he’d taken a pen and written it across his face. 

Dean took a deep breath and let it out, seemed to shake himself, “Yeah, OK, let’s go.”

0-0-0

The tension in the car was palpable. Dean was convinced it had a damned taste. Salty like sweat and sweet like adrenaline. He had to force himself not to look at the angel to his right. But Castiel was a magnet and Dean’s eyes were just too easily attracted. 

All the while those thoughts circled in Dean’s head, like vultures; Cas. It’s CAS! He’s REAL! 

He could feel the phantom caress of those hands, the burn of stubble against his inner thighs. The scrape of teeth up his length, a threat of teeth but a promise of gentleness. 

Castiel’s gaze felt heavy, especially when Dean knew the little guy could read his mind and here he was sitting there thinking about having sex with him. 

It was the cautious upward tilt of Castiel’s eyebrow that did it. Dean cleared his throat loudly, shook himself and willed the rush of air through the window to cool his preverbal jets. Maybe some music would calm the overeager construction team in his pants. 

Christ how embarrassing was that?

Don’t think about it! Don’t think about it he’ll hear you!

Distraction, he needed a distraction. 

A case, yeah. They needed a case. ANYTHING. Hell, he’d be happy with fucking gnomes as long as it meant he didn’t have to think about this.

He clicked the radio on and Foreigner came out, Dean slouched a little more in his seat and the miles peeled away under the tires.

0-0-0

They stopped to fill up the tank twice, Dean was half tempted to detour back to Atlantic City to refill his wallet because they were running damned low on funds, but wound up continuing south. 

They needed a case. Anything really, Dean wasn’t going to be picky, especially when all he could seem to think about was Cas’ hands, or the press of his body— Or his mouth—Christ his MOUTH!

No. NOT NOW!

There weren’t many potential cases in West Virginia. Too many hunters in the mountain state, and they weren’t the type to share. Dean remembered Bobby talking once about a case he and Rufus had gone on years ago in New Martinsville. That they’d been in town only two hours before being ran off by the local hunters. 

“Obscure lore is common place to them. If you ever get on their good side, they’re invaluable. But if you piss one of ‘em off, you’re screwed.”

One good thing West Virginia had going for it was how easily one could find lore. You pull in to a town and nine times out of ten you’ll be able to ask the first person you see; ‘Any legends or old wives tales about the area?’ and they’ll give you a list half a mile long. 

John had claimed it was the quartz in the area, made it a preverbal honey hole for the supernatural. Bobby said it was because there was witchcraft and Native magic in everything. “That’s why demons don’t frequent the area. They know the locals are hair triggers.”

They also had a fine collection of Mom and Pop diners. Dean had an affinity for little Mom and Pop diners. He found them homey and intimate though he would NEVER admit that aloud. He claimed it was because the food was better, and although that may be true for most places, sometimes it all came down to the fact that Dean wanted to feel like someone was cooking just for him, not for money, but because they wanted him to have a nice meal. 

Dean also liked diners that were unusual shapes or had kitschy themes. This was more for the entertainment value than anything. Sometimes a man just wanted to slide into a pink vinyl booth in a diner made from an old rail car with checkerboard flooring and Elvis memorabilia tacked to the walls. Or drop into a chair with a duct-taped seat cushion at a wobbly old pedestal table and eat off mismatched dishes while the teenaged waitress talked to her boss about her cheating boyfriend. 

When they sat down Castiel gave the other patrons and waitress the weirdly intense look he gave everything that he didn’t quite understand the purpose of. Dean tried futilely not to flush and grin, he had come to understand the little guy knew a metric fuckton of stuff, but didn’t understand what any of it meant. That seemed to be a reoccurring theme with angels, he decided. 

Dean had quoted Catcher in the Rye a few nights ago during a rain storm when he had been feeling particularly morose and Castiel just stared at him with a focused, uncomprehending look on his face and asked; “What cliff?”

Dean rubbed his face and looked at the clock on the wall, cursed because it was close to two AM and the motor court at the top of the hill seemed to be their last resort. 

Castiel himself seemed to be flagging, slouching in his seat across the booth, eyes flicking back and forth across the room, from the woodsy décor to the stained, worn floorboards. Every so often his eyes lit on one of the patrons and fluttered away again. Now though, now they’d landed on Dean and weren’t moving.

It made Dean’s skin itch and his jeans feel a little too tight. He latched onto the memories bubbling around like soup and tried to put a lid on them, pushed them down and shoved up a wall to keep his thoughts silent. Pictured himself in a soundproof booth and hoped that worked.

Castiel though, couldn’t look away. Dean’s t-shirt had a hole in it. Just a little thing, like maybe he’d dropped cigarette ashes on it or an ember from some smoldering skeleton had landed there and tried to eat through to kiss his skin. 

Castiel could see part of his shoulder through it, a freckle that reminded him of Jupiter. He couldn’t stop staring at it. 

The waitress came over and filled the empty mugs on the table at their elbows with coffee. 

She was in her mid-fifties, wore a faded pink dress with saggy tan support hose and had a couple bulging varicose veins on her calves. She looked tired, exhausted, and Dean could feel a weird buzz coming off her. Like the hum of voices in another room. Like the humidity in the air when you come in out of the rain.

She had to ask him three times why they’d brought their dog in and even then Dean’s mind didn’t really CLICK.

Castiel explained it, concise short words and the woman squared her shoulders, blew a strand of hair from her face and put pen to paper. 

The buzz didn’t go away and the longer the woman stood there, the louder it seemed to become. Dean wondered if maybe she wasn’t really just full of angry bees and they wouldn’t start crawling out of her nose at any second and swarm the bleary eyed college students in the corner and the truckers lined up at the bar. 

Castiel reached out. Not physically, thank Christ. He reached out with his grace and politely gave Dean a rough shake. He felt the contact crackling under his skin like cellophane and it took him a minute to realize the light bulbs around them were glowing too bright and the woman was giving him a concerned look. The look he’d seen gas station attendants giving people they feared were about to rob them. He’d been on the receiving end of a few of them in his time.

He made a hollow, stupid sound in his throat and looked down at the menu with its chewed corners; “Uh—Two glasses of orange juice, one glass of water and two of your all-you-can-eat specials.”

The waitress smiled uncomfortably, she didn’t have a name tag, likely lost it in the wash; she had lost a few of them that way. She had a newspaper in her apron pocket and she smiled warily when Dean asked if he could see it.

Dean scratched the mark on his chest while he flipped through the paper, didn’t seem to find anything that interested him and handed it to Castiel. “Anything stand out at you?”

He glanced at it; “They misspelled ‘Conflagration’. There’re shouldn’t be a ‘U’.”

Dean dropped his spoon onto the tabletop, little spatters of coffee followed it; “I meant does anything jump out at you as not natural?”

“There isn’t a ‘U’ in ‘conflagration’.” 

“Thank you Mister Spell,” He took the paper back and put it atop the napkin dispenser. “We need a case, like NOW.”

The waitress came over again with their drinks and said they could help themselves to the Breakfast Bar. Dean mumbled a thank you and counted out his morning medication, tossed them all back with a long drink of water and a scrape of his tongue against the backs of his teeth. “That Valerian root tastes like shit.” 

“Is it common that things taste like shit?”

Dean snorted, “Medicine? Yeah. Food, no. If food tastes like shit, don’t eat it,” he inhaled deeply and eyed the sneeze guard covered length of the buffet like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to stuff his face or hurl. 

“Cas, you’re not allergic to anything, are you?”

“I’m an angel of the lord. I have no allergies.”

“I meant your—Jimmy. He’s not allergic to anything, is he? I mean, you’re not gonna eat French Toast and swell up like a balloon, are you?”

Castiel was quiet for a moment, his expression blank as he searched his vessel’s brain, found no indication of a food allergy and replied in kind. 

Dean nudged his shoulder as soon as the college students were back in their seats and they made their approach. 

The food was fresh, steaming—piles of scrambled eggs, sausage links and patties, bacon, pancakes and waffles, French toast sticks, biscuits and diagonally cut slices of toast, two different kinds of gravy, packaged oatmeal and tea beside a spigot marked ‘HOT WATER’, and chilled pans of fruit.

Dean kind of stood there staring for a long while fingering the edges of his plate. He was trying to shield his thoughts, but he hadn’t quite managed it and Castiel could hear everything going on in his head. 

It’s not going to hurt you. Just man up and eat something dammit. You did it last night you can do it now… 

Weightheavydeadweightinhi middle— foreigncompoundsbeingbrokendownandabsorbedintohisbloodstream. Deadfleshslowlydigestedandmergingwithhisown. 

You are what you eat, Dean and everything a human eats is dead… Well almost everything. 

Shut up—just—JUST EAT SOMETHING! 

Chewing—chewingchewingchewingeatinghimalive. Hungryredteethandsmilingawfulfaces. 

Dead things. It’s just a table of dead things!

Dean’s knuckles were white and his mouth had compressed into a thin pale line. He looked somewhat green. 

“Dean?”

“Hmmm?” He didn’t dare open his mouth. 

“Would it help if I told you those aren’t real eggs?”

His breath hitched and came out in a stuttering hiss, “Okay,” He moved forward slowly, bouncing slightly on his toes. A little of this, a little of that—a couple grapes to roll around and wobble across the empty places on the ceramic. 

Castiel followed his example, didn’t really know what to do himself. He didn’t need to eat, food hadn’t really ever ‘TASTED’ like Dean said it did. Everything was muted and artificial feeling filtered through his vessel. He wasn’t meant to experience such things, this body was merely transportation on a plane of existence where his form was incorporeal and unable to interact effectively. His grace, now that it was to a manageable level, sustained his vessel so there really was no point in this. 

And yet, Dean’s reaction to food puzzled him, piqued his curiosity. Humanity spent hundreds of years focused on food, on tastes and aromas. They had whole portions of their language devoted specifically toward eating. People dedicated their lives to culinary pursuits. Finding the greatest this or that, the tastiest thing, the BEST—It was as much a part of their culture as fashion, and don’t get him started on fashion—Heaven above… 

Dean took his seat at their table again and leaned heavily on his elbow above the plate, staring down at it as if the mere thought of swallowing the few forkfuls of ‘eggs’ or the pancake or the mismatched slightly misshapen grapes, was equivalent to climbing Everest. 

Castiel watched him. Counted the grains of salt he shook onto the eggs, the fat sugar molecules in the syrup, the rhythm in the clack of Dean’s fork against the tabletop as he continued to stare—

“You’re stalling.”

“I know that,” he snapped.

“Why?”

Dean looked up at him without moving his head, annoyance radiating off of him like tongues of flame.

“Oh, the eating disorder. You find the presence of it intimidating,” He looked down at his own plate. “I can’t say I blame you.” 

He snorted, “Having food in your mouth doesn’t freak you out like this,” Dean put down his fork and wrapped his arm around his middle; “It’s food. You’re supposed to eat it. The human body can’t survive without it.”

Castiel nodded, watched a woman walk past with her plate and lowered his voice; “What is the purpose of waffles? They’re chemically identical to pancakes.”

Dean rubbed his brow tiredly; “Waffles hold syrup better and don’t fall apart as easily.”

“So, their intended purpose is to hold proportionally more syrup without losing their structural integrity.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then, why didn’t you get waffles?”

Dean leaned back in his seat and scratched the side of his head; “You’re not helping.”

“I don’t know how to help this… I don’t need to eat.”

“And you’re sure you can’t just mojo all this—“ His hand twitched on his stomach and he made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat; “—away, can you?”

“No. It’s more than just physical. If I tried anyway I could damage your brain.”

Dean hunched over his plate again; “For an all-powerful angel of the lord, you can’t really do much of anything, can you.”

Castiel scowled. Dean could feel the indignity in it, could make out Castiel’s edges just enough without trying that he knew he’d probably said something he shouldn’t have, but he had no desire to take it back. He was frustrated, his mind wouldn’t listen and kept supplying inappropriate images, and on top of it all, he couldn’t find a case or distract himself with food. 

The sharp kick to the shin came without warning and Dean jerked, banged his knee on the underside of the table in shock and wrapped both hands around the spot; “OW!” 

The college students in the corner glance their way and back to their plates and Sputnik made a worried sound in her throat, kind of a mixture of a growl and a whine. It kind of reminded Dean of Sam.

Castiel’s shoulders squared and his voice came out low and dangerous; “If you weren’t sitting down I could kick your ass.” 

Dean stared at him. Blinked and gave his head a shake. Something bubbled in his chest, warmth he hadn‘t felt in a long time. Pride, lo—

Castiel stared back, his expression serious. 

Dean remembered a punch to the shoulder, an angry scowl and his breath eased out of his lungs. Head tilting downward.

Castiel’s shoulders went up a little, chin going down like he wasn’t sure if he’d done the right thing or not. Like a kid who spoke up and now everyone’s just staring at them agape. There wsn’t any middle ground to this, he either fucked up beyond all redemption or he’s dazzled everyone. Self-consciousness didn’t look good on him, Dean didn’t like it at all.

Dean felt himself relax, rubbed his abused shin a few more times and picked up his fork. 

The eggs were rubbery, too much salt. He nearly spat them out, but he swallowed instead, breathed and went in for another bite. 

“Dean?”

He was too focused on what he was doing to try and answer. If he stopped now he wouldn’t be able to start again. 

“Dean, I’m—“

“Don’t,” He cut into the pancake; “Don’t apologize…” He breathed in deeply while he chewed; “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.” 

Castiel stared at him unblinking and there was something in his face. Something a little confused, a little awed, a little—afraid.

“You OK?”

He blinked rapidly, seemed to shake himself within his vessel and looked down at his plate as if he were just noticing it for the first time. 

“Cas?”

Nothing.

“Look, you don’t have to forgive me. That was a shitty thing to say. It’s OK to be mad, you’re allowed to be mad.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Then you forgive me?”

Castiel’s face turned slightly pink. 

“Dude, you OK?”

“I can’t.”

Dean blinked, felt a little hurt, but then again he kind of deserved it; “Oh… Okay.”

“You don’t understand.”

“No, no—It’s fine, really.” 

“No, it isn’t.”

“I made you mad. You’ve got every right to be mad. If you don’t want to forgive me that’s fine. It’s your choice.”

“No, Dean—“

“Cas, I get it!” He waved a hand between them, “I fucked up, it’s fine.”

Castiel just stared at him, seemed more upset by the second. His face slowly reddened and his nose wrinkled up. “It’s not as easy as just saying it.”

Dean’s brows scrunched down, “What?”

“Forgiving someone. It’s not as easy as humanity makes it out to be.” 

“Really?”

“Yes. Forgiveness MEANS something. It’s absolution without penance… I—I don’t understand it and I can’t do it.” 

“You just say it and you forgive them.”

“Words have power… It’s pointless if you just say the words, Dean. You have to MEAN them, you have to put yourself into them and I don’t know how to do that.” 

Dean got it. It was surprising, but he did. There is a difference, a BIG difference—He remembered Anna, that feeling of unworthiness that had washed over him when she’d said those words. She’d MEANT them in a way Dean never had. In a way he had never known anybody else to mean them. He’d thought it was an angel thing, that maybe you had to be so incredibly holy you weren’t human to be able to forgive someone who had hurt you. He’d said the words innumerable times but had he ever MEANT them? Had he ever truly been able to forgive someone, including Sam, if they hadn’t EARNED it? There were things he was still angry at Sam about that he had claimed to have forgiven, things he would likely bring up the next time Sam did something wrong— He swore he’d forgiven those things, but maybe—maybe he hadn’t.

Dean stared down at his plate for a moment in surprise and perhaps a little self-disgust. He swallowed his food and tried not to let it escape. 

“Do you see it now?” Cas’ voice was hushed, a little pained and when Dean looked up he saw the discomfort written across his face. “I want to, but I don’t know how.” 

Dean took a slow drink of his coffee and flexed his fingers around the heat of the mug; “Me neither.”

Castiel let out a huff of breath and, on a whim, spitefully stuffed a whole piece of sausage in his mouth. He looked absurd sitting there chewing it with his cheek pooched out and such a downtrodden look on his face. 

Dean could only look at him for about three seconds before he had to turn away and hide a grin in his fist. And the grin became a snort of laughter and the next second he was giggling. Actually fucking giggling. 

“Wha’?” It came out around half chewed meat and Dean lost it, leaned back in his seat with one arm around his middle the other over his face trying to smother the laughter. 

Castiel swallowed it all down and scowled, “Why are you laughing?”

Dean wiped moisture from his eyes and motioned to the angel; “You have no idea how to eat, do you.”

Castiel’s ears went pink and Dean jerked his knees up to keep from being kicked again; “No—no, I’m not being a jerk. You—you just—You honestly don’t know how to eat when you’re not hungry, do you?”

“This body doesn’t require sustenance, eating is pointless—“

“Okay, look,” Dean waved his hand again, “I’ll show you something cool to make up for the shitty thing I said, OK? Will that work?”

“’Cool’ as in possessing a low temperature, or ‘cool’ as in agreeable.”

“Cool as in awesome…” He pointed to Castiel’s plate; “You don’t ‘need’ to eat, okay… But have you ever WANTED to eat?”

“No.” 

“Why not?”

“Because it serves no purpose—“

“Okay, bad question…” He was quiet for a moment and started again, “Food can be for more than just sustaining the machine, OK? It can be for pleasure too.” 

Castiel didn’t seem convinced.

“Taste, Cas. Taste… Every time I’ve seen you eating something you’ve got this bored look on your face like you can’t taste a damned thing. Food has all these awesome flavors… Like—like this,” he motioned to his pancake. “This tastes great.”

“And yet you can’t eat it.” 

His shoulders sagged; “That’s beside the point. Just humor me here, OK? It’s harder for me to eat if nobody else is eating… Just humor me.” 

He sighed, tore off a piece of his own pancake with the tines of his fork and put it in his mouth. 

“There, see?”

“No.” 

“Do you not know how to taste either?”

“I can taste everything.”

“Obviously not.”

“I taste the proteins and sugars and carbohydrates. The acidity of the lemon juice the cook put in the batter. I can—“

Dean’s eyebrow cocked up, “That isn’t tasting, that’s—that’s a chemical breakdown,” He glanced around to make sure they weren’t talking too loud or drawing the attention of the growing number of patrons. “Okay, maybe it’s your grace.”

“What?”

“When you were drained you slept like a log, you had to eat, you went to the bathroom—you had some serious BO—Maybe grace interferes with your taste buds,” He motioned to Castiel’s mouth. “Can you—can you turn it off for a little bit?”

“Can you turn off your spleen?”

Dean scowled at him and huffed out a breath through flared nostrils. 

“I’ve never had the need to ‘turn it off’.”

Dean shrugged one shoulder up toward his ear; “I can turn it off. You just gotta—gotta stuff it down like you’re packin’ a suitcase,” He took a deep breath and reached out to Castiel’s grace, then ‘Tucked’, let the angel feel how he’d done it. 

Castiel let out a sigh, withdrew and focused himself, gathered his grace to him and pushed it down. The sounds of the diner became less clear, the smells less distinct. 

“Okay, try it now,” Dean’s voice didn’t ring as much as it had before.

He smashed a piece of food between his tongue and hard palate, swallowed. “It’s the same.” 

“Then dial it down some more, come on. You won’t regret it.”

“Dean, if I do that I won’t be able to tell if we’re being watched.”

“I’ll keep an eye out—“ He stretched out the threads of his own grace like an octopus, wiggled around wildly in all directions. 

Castiel wanted to tell him he was acting like a fool, that there was proper decorum when it came to stretching out one’s grace, rules and proper configurations, but he just snorted instead. “It’s not your eyes you have to—“

“Just try it.”

He flattened his hands on his thighs, tilted his head down and pulled in—kept drawing it back and back and back. That weird tingle returned to his extremities, the little hairs on his borrowed arms rose to attention, the beds of his nails itched.

“I can still see you, keep going.” 

He could feel himself compacting farther and farther, the pressure on his core increased with each passing second. The tenuous grasp he had on Jimmy Novak’s soul shifted— he folded his wings in tight.

Dean leaned forward over the table with concern in his eyes and there was something— something—

It happened in a RUSH, he squeezed his grace IN just a little more, pulled Jimmy’s soul in tight to his core and—

The room around him roared too loud—voices and clattering dishes—the crush of too many bodies in a too small space. Voices and bodies and souls oblivious to the world around them. He—he can’t hear anyone’s thoughts. He can’t feel their intent! The fabric of his jeans was heavy, stiff. Not worn in the right places for his body type. His shirts were clinging and there was a little slick of sweat between his shoulder blades. The air smelled like smoke and bitter coffee and burnt meat. There was a film on his teeth and a taste in his mouth. The seat under him was lumpy and pressing against the backs of his knees—the table was sticky and greasy and his shoes squeaked against the floor under the table, they were too big on his feet and the wound in his side from Zechariah’s ‘bullet’ still ACHED. He couldn’t hear the scream of the earth hurtling through space. The groan of the planets in their orbit. He couldn’t feel his hands—He can’t feel his HANDS!

“Cas?”

He can FEEL—Oh, Father— “Oh, God…”

“Cas?” Dean touched his arm and all he could feel is warmth, pressure—the contact is electric, shoots up into his throat and pulls his breath out in a whoosh. 

He pressed his hands together tightly trying to find some kind of balance. There was no resistance, there was no grace between his palms. No air in his lungs—LUNGS! Throat—Trachea, heart—stomach. Bowels—stomach rumbling emptysoemptyit HURTS—

“Cas, you gotta breathe… Human bodies need air.”

Breathe. Air, he reached for it across the tabletop, tried to catch it and force it back in but it wouldn’t come—it—it won’t come back! His hands tangled in the sleeves of Dean’s shirt.

How do you breathe?

“I-I don’t like this—“

It took a minute but he did it, sat there staring at Dean and all he could see were Dean’s outsides. What little of his angelic vision had remained that allowed him to glimpse a dim haze of Dean’s soul was gone. But, there was COLOR to the world in such vibrant shades, glorious hues so varied and alive it was like he’d never seen them before. Wondrous and unceasing—

“Cas, are you OK?”

Castiel looked around with his mouth hanging open and his eyes thrown wide, pulse beating hard in his neck. 

“Hey, Earth to, Cas,” Dean snapped his fingers a few times. His brows drew down, voice coming out in a hiss. “Shit—Jimmy?”

“No…” Castiel swiped his tongue over his lips, fire and electricity danced across it. “This is somewhat… overwhelming.”

“What, the pancakes?”

“Feeling.” 

“Feeling?”

“You feel this all the time… These intensities— You feel nothing and yet everything at once, with absolutely no way to sort through the sensations, and you have no idea,” His eyes won’t stop roving around the room. “You have no idea. I… I can feel this body dying around me—“

“Okay—“ Dean gripped his arm a little tighter, “Yeah, that’s enough, come back. Little too far down the rabbit hole.” 

Castiel had to physically shake himself as he eased his grace out again… but the tingle in his edges didn’t fade, not like it had that morning. The hollow ACHE in his stomach remained. He wrapped his arms around it and leaned forward with a startled grunt. “This isn’t natural… It—How can you stand this!”

Dean blinked, eyebrows up near his hairline, “We eat. Your grace may keep that body going, but apparently it still gets hungry because I haven’t heard growling like that since Sam and me went after that last werewolf.”

Castiel looked at the plate in front of him and back to Dean; “My stomach sounds like a werewolf?”

Dean’s eyes roll; “Just eat, OK?”

He straightened up warily, one arm still around his howling stomach, tore off another bit of pancake with his fork and put it in his mouth. 

Dean would admit later that he wasn’t thinking when he did it. It’s one of his faults. He just kind of pushed his plate over; “Try it with syrup,” He plucked up a grape and popped it in his mouth, “I’ll be right back.”

It felt a little easier the second visit to the buffet. Part of him was glad Sam wasn’t there to GRIN at him over the fruit but he still stacked a few strips of bacon on top to spite him. That weird BUZZ in the room is stronger. He’d dismissed it as that din of chatter you always get in restaurants, but this was proportionally larger than the crowd in the building. He didn’t know what to think of it, wrung a finger in his ear and plucked up a package of instant oatmeal. Apple cinnamon, that he might be able to do. It was while he was returning to his seat that he noticed the problem. Sputnik was gnawing on a dried out piece of toast someone had dropped for her, Dean suspected one of the college students two booths down, and Castiel was gone. 

There was still food on the angel’s plate, but what had been left on Dean’s was gone. 

“What the hell?” He put his plate and bowl down and looked back toward the bar—spotted Castiel immediately, standing between two small children at the waffle corner—stacking his plate like the damn things are Lincoln Logs. The kid on his left is staring with his mouth open and the one on his right is looking around for a parent. 

Dean took four long strides over and caught his elbow; “Dude—“

And there was a look in Castiel’s eyes, something almost feverish. Enlightened. 

“Cas?”

“Sweet.” 

Dean blinked stupidly at him. “Excuse me.” 

“Syrup,” He tilted his chin downward seriously, lowered his voice as if it were a national secret; “Syrup is sweet.” 

Dean’s eyebrows curl down and by the time he realizes what Castiel meant the little guy is already back at the table upending the carafe of butter maple over his plate. 

Looking back, Dean should have known better. But, when had he ever claimed to be the smart one.

They were heading south on I-79, the sun was coming up and Dean thought maybe Virginia sounded good since West Virginia was a kind of Red Zone to out-of-staters. The locals were territorial as fuck; “Dude, you OK?”

Castiel had taken up the back seat, sprawled out with his legs jackknifed and his arms around his middle. “I don’t like this.”

“You shouldn’t have eaten so much.”

“How do you know when to stop?”

“When you’re full.”

“When is that?”

“About two Pancake Houses ago.”

Castiel groaned.

Sputnik sighed weightily from the passenger seat and lowered her head to her paws. 

“Temperance, isn’t that something angels are always preaching about?”

“I’m not a Virtue.”

Dean snorted. “No, you’re not…”

“I’m a Seraphim… A warrior of God—“ Another groan.

“A warrior of God with a belly ache,” Dean felt like his face might explode. “You do understand that ‘All-You-Can-Eat’ isn’t a challenge, right?”

He got a wordless grumble in return. 

“It’s a stomachache, Cas. You’re not dying. You just need to walk it off… Maybe take some antacids.”

“How will putting more in help?”

Dean rolled his eyes; “Just calm down, you’re fine… Think of it as a learning experience. You know not to eat as much now… First lesson in being human; Know when to put the waffle down.”

He released a hummed kind of moan and rubbed his stomach; “But the taste was good.”

Dean propped his temple in his hand and flicked the radio on low; “Too much of a good thing is still too much.”

“Okay.”

Castiel fell asleep sometime after seven, Dean didn’t even really notice until he glanced in the back and saw the angel was limp and still with his head tilted back. He kind of snored a little. 

It—it was kind of adorable. 

Okay, maybe a lot adorable… Maybe Dean felt a little warm and fuzzy deep down, maybe he turned the radio down so he could hear Castiel’s breathing. Maybe he let his mind wander a little, imagined a bed that had known no weight other than their own. Sheets that only they had slept on, a tangle of limbs and cool air from an air conditioner that didn’t rattle or smoke or buzz with old shorting wires. 

Maybe Dean drove with a little grin on his face imagining waking up without the pressure of the apocalypse, drowsy innocent kisses and the casual contact of fingers in his own 

Dean reached out, let the extended edges of himself hover over Castiel—feel the otherworldly shape of him, the familiar warm PRESENCE of him. 

It’s him… I know it’s him. I KNOW IT’S HIM! 

It was the same, the warmth, the FEEL of him. It was THE SAME!

Dean rubbed his eyes tiredly, shifted his weight against the car seat and blinked at the signs flipping past. 

Restaurants, gas stations—need one of those soon—no hotels. No lodging. Crap. 

He exhaled mightily and took the next exit, blinked at the clock in the dash and felt his very bones ache. 

This is what you get for not fueling the body right, Dean. You get a fucked up sleep schedule and no muscle tone. Christ. 

He filled the gas tank and a twenty-four ounce cup of black coffee. Kept heading south until his eyes lost focus and the last of the caffeine worked its way out of his system. 

Dean had begun to accumulate a burgeoning hatred for crappy motels. They were all the same, all smelled the same and had the same stains and lumps in the mattresses. The only thing that ever seemed to vary was the shitty décor or the color of the garbage bags. 

He glanced at Castiel, still asleep in the back seat and let out a sigh. 

Sputnik was whining when he came out of the motel office with the key, practically doing a little potty dance with her stubby legs pulled together. 

Dean let her out and watched as she bounded a few feet away and gave him a sharp doggy scowl as she squatted in the grass. He muttered an apology, mostly to himself and shook Castiel awake.

The angel was bleary eyed, and his face was puffy. It was kind of funny. 

Dean pushed him into the room and fished the dinky little bag out of the trunk. It just wasn’t going to cut it. They needed money and clothes and Dean needed his prescriptions refilled. Lovely. Just—just lovely. He rubbed his face and nudged Sputnik into the room with the side of his boot. She released a little huff at the push and scraped her feet on the carpet. 

Castiel was already sprawled over one of the beds, spread out on his back like a starfish and Sputnik was nosing around in the kitchenette looking for crumbs left by the previous occupants.

Previous occupants. Dean looked around and wondered, not for the first time in his life, which surfaces in the room had been fucked on, which had someone scattered drugs across, how many dirty baby diapers had been changed on that wobbly table. How many drunks had pissed on the carpet or rubbed shit on the walls—

He felt a sudden, but not foreign need to scrub the place down. Sterilize it and maybe salt and burn that chair in the corner because he’s pretty sure he knows what that dark splatter is across the seat. 

Castiel seems completely unaffected by it all. Is well on his way to dreamland once again, but Dean is having a little bit of a crisis and—

“I’m gonna clean up—you OK for a while?”

Castiel’s brows scrunch; “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Dean snorted; “You ate a metric shit-ton of waffles. That’s how the human body works.”

One eye cracks open; “Digestion…” He rubbed his palms over his stomach, hiked his shirt up to press his hands into skin; “Yes, everything appears to be normal.”

Dean felt heat slowly leech into his face again. The jeans Castiel had put on weren’t quite his size, Jimmy’s body wasn’t as broad as Dean or Sam’s. He was incredibly lean, all long muscles and naturally tanned skin dusted with… Dean could see quite a lot of that skin, and the dark little hairs below his belly button, the elastic of borrowed underwear—Thank Christ he was actually wearing them this time. The dips of his pelvis and— 

Dean’s mouth was dry and there was a peculiar tingle south of his belt, a heat growing between his hips and all he could think about was how smooth that skin felt, how his fingertips had found little imperfections, scar tissue and the odd little freckle. Had scratched his blunt nails over them until Cas had shivered and arched into the touch, drove into him just a little harder—

It happened quick and completely without warning, a throb—and Dean’s knees almost gave out. He put a hand to his stomach with a grunt and darted into the bathroom, door slamming behind him. 

He felt the concern in Castiel, felt the angel’s grace reaching out to him, but he pulled back—humiliated and a little bit freaked out. 

Castiel called his name but Dean wrenched open the tap in the bathtub to drown it out and eased himself down on the edge with his head in his hand, and the other low on his stomach. 

Dean wasn’t exactly sure what had just happened. He knew what arousal felt like, knew that could be part of it, but… Well, for lack of a better word, his asshole had never really had anything to do with it before. Yeah, OK, a few women he’d been with had played around; being fingered while they were giving him a blow job could be nice… Had been, until the whole djinn thing at least, then it had felt—it… It had felt like a betrayal because they weren’t Cas and deep down where he would never admit to feeling it, all he had wanted was Cas. 

But, Cas was here now. Right? It— it had to be him. 

He couldn’t stop his mind, and the images it conjured up just made his heart leap into his throat. 

Cas looked indignant, hair mussed and cheeks dusted with stubble; “This is your big homophobic ‘freak out’ everyone’s been warning me to watch out for,” He actually made quotation marks with his fingers.

Dean rubbed his face and felt a soft little groan bubble up in his throat. 

This is it. I’m having a big gay freak out because I saw Castiel’s pubic hair. Wonderful. He pushed himself to his feet and stripped quickly out of his clothes. No, I’m having a big gay freak out because I saw his pubic hair and my asshole started throbbing. That’s why I’m freaking out.

The water pressure was shitty. It would have come out faster if it had been dribbling out under its own weight. He scratched his nails through his hair to wet it and scoured his scalp with the watery hotel complementary shampoo.

Was it really so bad? Kind of maybe—sort of wanting to go back out there and tell Cas to fuck him? Drown out all forty years worth of hell memories with one night? Was it so bad?

It won’t work. You know it won’t work. Things never work out like they do in the movies. There’s no such thing as healing cock. 

He spluttered out a laugh, half smothered in soap bubbles. Was he really thinking about having sex with another guy?

Why wasn’t he surprised?

Because you’ve been thinking about it since the moment he touched you in the djinn world. You’ve wanted it since you woke up beside him. You’ve always wanted it but you were too scared to do anything about it. 

But, I’m not gay. It’s not all guys… it’s just Him. Just Cas. Only Cas. 

Is that him? Is it really him?

The scars. Cas had scars… He’d had his appendix out, he’d— The only scars Castiel has are the ones he got because of me. And my Cas didn’t have those. Dean ground his teeth, remembered that fizzPOP sensation transferred through him when Zechariah had shot Castiel, closed his eyes and saw the red dimple of scar tissue in the flesh above Castiel’s hip. The starburst of an exit wound and pinpricks of stitches. 

He remembered lying there dipping his fingertips into each pockmark along Cas’ ribs, the slash across his lower abdomen, little nicks on his knuckles and the line on his lips. He remembered the texture of them beneath his tongue. The salty tang of sweat on flesh—

White eyes and a crooked grin. Familiar words warped, everything that had comforted him shredded—

He leaned his forehead against the shower wall and focused on his breathing, focused on pushing everything down so Castiel couldn’t hear it. 

A voice that sounded too much like Alistair’s breathed poison into his thoughts; This is fucked up, you know that, right? Pining after a hallucination? Almost as bad as when you used to fantasize about Ginger from Gilligan’s Island. I mean, come on, Dean. How could it be him? How could it possibly be him? 

Dean lashed out against the thoughts, shoved them down and away from himself, physically shook his head to dislodge them. It was him I know it. I KNOW IT. I don’t even know how I know it, I just FEEL IT… Dean fitted both palms over his face and tried to rub away the blood pooling in his cheeks; I know him. It’s him, I have never been more certain of anything in my life. It’s HIM. Cas is HIM.

The Alistair in his head remained silent and instead Dean heard his own voice echo back at him out of the abyss. But HOW? How can it be him when he doesn’t remember me? 

He leaned his head against the wall again and let the water wash the soap from the back of his neck. I know it’s him. I know it. 

A face appeared between the edge of the curtain and the shower wall; “Dean?”

He smashed himself into the corner with a shriek; “JESUSFUCK!” and every muscle in his body locked up.

Castiel blinked in surprise; “You’ve been very quiet, are you alright?”

“FINE!” He could FEEL himself blushing to his goddamned kneecaps. “PERSONAL SPACE! Y-YOU DON’T JUST COME IN ON A GUY IN THE SHOWER!”

“I knocked, Dean. I did knock.”

“I don’t care if you knocked!”

“But—“

“NO BUTS!” Butts… Butts, Castiel had a nice butt— “You don’t walk in on a guy in the shower!”

“Why are you in the corner like that? You weren’t masturbating, there isn’t anything—“

“JESUS CHRIST, CAS, GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!”

Castiel let out an audible sigh and the door shut with a considerable amount of force. 

0-0-0

Dean came out of the bathroom a little more than six minutes later. He didn’t look happy. Face scrunched, energy pulled in, stance defensive. He shuffled out wearing the same clothes he’d worn going in and scrubbing a towel over his hair. “We need to make a supply run.”

Castiel’s brows pulled down. “Why?”

“Because there was only two changes of clothes in that bag. I’m wearing one, you’re wearing one… Unless you want to sit around naked in a Laundromat we need clothes,” He looked at his watch. 

“And sitting around naked in a Laundromat is… bad.”

Dean blinked at him dazed and gave his head a shake. “You’re like a little kid or sumthin’.” 

“Should I bathe as well?”

“Yeah. You do that… I need to make a call,” He dropped to sit on the opposite bed and plucked up the phone. 

Castiel disappeared into the bathroom and Dean waited until the water turned on before he punched in the number. 

Bobby answered and when Dean asked if Sam was awake the older man handed the phone over. 

“Dean? Hey—What’s up?”

Sam was eating. Dean could hear him chewing. 

“Dean?”

“You said I could talk to you, right? If I needed to?”

“Of course.”

“Well… You—you wouldn’t think I was a pansy if I told you I might be a little bit… not exactly straight.”

Sam swallowed. “You’re acting like I didn’t know this already.” 

“Yeah, well it’s just kind of hitting me and Ellen would just try to baby me and I don’t want to be babied right now, I just want the truth. Would you think I was a pansy if I wasn’t exactly straight?”

“No.”

“No? Simple as that? ‘No.’”

“Yeah, simple as that.”

Dean blinked stupidly.

Sam took another bite of his food and spoke around it; “Did you two bump uglies?”

Bobby made a coughing hacking noise in the background and muttered that he was going for some air.

Dean felt at once indignant and terrified. “No!”

“Then what’s up with the existential crisis?”

“I remembered how I wound up with Castiel’s grace in me.”

“Oh, uh… Good or bad?”

He huffed. “It’s him.”

“Who?”

“Cas.”

“Cas?” He hesitated, “Cas as in the whole djinn thing?”

He rubbed his face. “Yeah.” 

“So, Cas and Castiel are the same? Why am I not sensing a ‘yipee’ in there?”

“He doesn’t remember me.”

“Oh,” Sam took a deep breath; “Maybe Zechariah took it like he did to you?”

“No… Cas said you can’t just take a memory like that. Angels don’t forget souls. Ever.”

“Then it wasn’t him?”

“It was him, Sam!”

“Okay! Sorry! Jeez… Just being the voice of reason here, but if he can’t remember you, how can it be him?”

Dean rubbed his face; “I don’t know.”

“Are you absolutely certain that it’s really, actually him?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Because I look in his eyes and I can feel it? Because I KNOW him in the whole Hallmark channel spiritual sense? Because I feel it in my soul? “I just do.”

“Dean—Not to sound like a broken record here, but—did you stop to think that maybe you’re wrong?”

He stared at his toes curled into the carpet. 

“The human mind can’t make up a face. I mean, maybe you just saw Jimmy some time when you were running cases on your own, thought he was kind of cute and forgot about him, then just—just remembered him when the djinn got you.” 

“Yeah,” Dean rubbed his face, “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” 

“I’m sorry.”

He breathed in and let it out slowly, “It’s OK.”

“Look, I hope I’m wrong. It would be kinda cool if Castiel really is him, OK? Weird, but good… You deserve to be happy. If Castiel makes you happy then—” 

“But if it’s not him—“

“If Castiel is him, then awesome. We’ll worry about how later… If it’s not him then it’s OK… Don’t reject him just because he’s not some paragon you have in your mind.”

Dean let out a dry sounding chuckle; “I thought you were the voice or reason? You seem suspiciously OK with all this.” 

“What’s not to be OK with? This is probably the most normal thing we’ve ever had to deal with. As long as you’re not gonna let it interfere with your judgment in the field, I have absolutely no problem with you being not exactly straight.”

“Dad would have flipped out—“

“Yeah, well, Dad was a narrow minded dick when it came to stuff like this. It’s your life, you can’t let the memory of him dictate your decisions. If you want to be with Cas, then… Be with Cas. Do I have to give you the whole safe sex talk thing again?”

Dean choked and found he couldn’t keep from laughing. 

“Seriously, man,” Sam made a few breathless huffs like laughter; “Why would you think I’d be mad? Just—Yanno, don’t ever—EVER give me details. Like EVEREVER.”

He breathed out and swiped the pads of his fingers under his eyes; “Oh, that won’t be a problem.”

Sam stayed quiet for a three count, let the giggles die off. “Dean?”

He grunted.

“Promise me something.”

“What?”

“Promise me that if you and Cas do get together you won’t force yourself into it.” 

Dean felt his nose wrinkle up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve got a second chance here, man. It’s OK to take things slow… You’ve never had a serious relationship before and—“

“What’re you talkin’ about? I’ve had serious relationships before.” 

“I’ve seen the way you look at him. You’ve NEVER looked at anyone like that before. Don’t rush into it just because you can, man… If this— If he really is CAS, then he’s worth the wait, isn’t he?”

“Are you seriously giving me that whole ‘save yourself for true love’ speech?” He snorted, “Sam, as soon as we find a way to fix your back and all, you really need to get laid, you’re turning into even more of a chick than normal.” 

Sam hummed; “Yeah, sure, Dean. Sure.” 

0-0-0

Dean felt unbelievably self-conscious. He had always been aware of himself to the point of paranoia, it was kind of a necessity in this life. Those who didn’t adapt were taken out awful quick. But wandering around the men’s section at K-mart, Dean felt it like never before. Sam’s words echoed in his head every time he picked up a pair of jeans from the discount rack or squinted at Castiel to try and gauge if he was a thirty-four or a thirty-six without dragging the little guy over and turning out the tags of his borrowed clothes. 

Castiel was examining the flip phone Dean had thrust into his hands as they passed the electronics department with an expression of dubious curiosity on his face. Every so often he would tear his attention away from the phone and ask what made this brand more expensive when it was made with the exact same materials as this other brand and what was the purpose of polyester blends when cotton was considered superior.

Dean tried to ignore him. Tried… Until Castiel came over and interrupted his perusal of packaged underwear with a hard prod of his grace.

“Dude,” Dean gave himself a shake and took half a step back. “What?”

“You’re quiet.”

“I’m thinking,” He turned back to the packages. 

“You weren’t quiet yesterday.”

“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” He tossed back the solids and dropped the package with all the stripes into the cart. Sam usually got solids, but Sam wasn’t here. “Christ I hate shopping.”

Castiel followed him a little too closely and sat when Dean told him to sit in the shoe department. Kicked off his borrowed boots and put on the pair Dean pushed in his direction. Dean remembered doing this with Sam in a Goodwill years ago, crouching in the floor and pressing his thumbs into the toes of sneakers and telling Sam to wiggle. He thought he was a little too old to be doing it again but Castiel had seemed perfectly content to let Bobby’s old too-big boots rub blisters on his feet. 

“You need to take care of yourself, Cas—“ He hesitated, “You need to take care of this body, OK? Jimmy let you use it, you need to respect it.” 

Castiel bowed his chin and looked down at his vessel. “It’s just a body—“

“Yeah, but without it Jimmy would be dead and you’d be a floating cloud of rainbows burning out people’s eyes and breaking windows when you tried to talk. Show him some respect.” 

Castiel didn’t seem exactly pleased about it at first. Not until Dean was heading toward the checkout lines. “He is a good man, confused—but good.” 

“What?”

“He is not a happy man. He prayed constantly for change, yet never took the chance to accomplish it when it was offered.”

“People are like that, Cas. They want you to give ‘em what they want, they don’t wanna work for it.” 

“Why?”

“Because people are greedy and lazy and they don’t like to wait for stuff even if it’s… worth it,” He ducked his head and turned quickly away, “Come on, let’s get outta here.”

Sputnik was waiting by the hotel door when they returned. She yapped at Dean angrily and kicked her feet on the carpet then dragged over a towel she’d managed to pull off the rack in the bathroom and shook it viciously at him. 

“You are one weird little dog, you know that?” Dean nudged her back with his foot and stepped into the room. He dropped his own bags in the corner and sprawled backward over the bed farthest from the door.

Castiel put his bags down in the chair and stared down at Sputnik for a few minutes. She stared back, towel in her mouth and huffed audibly at him around it a few times. She inhaled and let it out, turned rapidly in three counterclockwise circles and launched herself up onto the empty bed, stomped a little groove for herself by the pillows and laid down.

Dean didn’t really know what was happening until Castiel had perched himself on the bed at his hip. “There’s two beds for a reason, yanno.”

“Would you prefer it if I—“

Dean looked away, couldn’t stop his grace from flinching uncomfortably even though he tried. 

“It’s easier to maintain physical contact if we share the bed.”

“You make it sound weird,” He rubbed the corner of one eye; “You don’t have to feel obligated. I’m perfectly capable of sleeping without you there.” 

Castiel nodded once and stood, moved to the other bed and sat about removing his shoes. 

Dean kicked off his boots and popped the button of his jeans, found a soft spot in the mattress and fitted himself into it, arms crossed behind his head. 

Castiel stripped down to his underwear, seemed to contemplate taking those off too but left them on. 

The world continued to move outside the window. Cars on the street, people checking in and out. 

Sam’s voice talked in circles in Dean’s head until that was all he could hear, all his mind would let him focus on. His stomach churned and an ache settled low in his gut. Images of Jamie and the nameless man from the bar, he’d smelled like cigarette smoke and given Dean a crooked pitying grin before he’d walked away. 

“Hey, Cas?”

“Yes, Dean?”

“I—uh… I never thanked you.” 

Castiel’s hair grated on the pillow case as he turned his head, spied Dean’s shape against the far wall. 

“I never thanked you for fixing me after…” He cleared his throat, “After you got me outta hell.” 

“I don’t understand.”

Dean held up his hand and wiggled his fingers. “My fingers used to be all crooked cause I’d broke them so often but didn’t get them set right… I used to have fillings—and got a molar knocked out in a fight once… But its fixed now… I—uh—I mean, that’s a big difference in itself, but you… you remade everything. Everything was new.”

Castiel felt it, couldn’t really see it, but he felt the tension in Dean’s body and soul coiling, readying itself to snap. He wanted to reach out, wanted to lay his hands on Dean’s shoulder and cheek and help him find some sort of equilibrium. 

“I mean,” Dean tried to laugh it off, but it sounded forced and thin; “—Sam thought I was stupid, but I know my body. Straight fingers and no cavities I can overlook, but THAT. I mean, come on, did you think I wouldn’t notice?” He glanced over, then quickly away, expression switching from nervous humor to borderline panic. “It—uh—It helped. I didn’t know how until a couple weeks ago, but it helped. I don’t think I would have been able to—Just thanks, I guess.”

“Dean.”

“I just—I just have one question.”

Castiel watched him, how at once he seemed to bleed into the scenery and blaze out from it in desperation.

“Is it—am I OK… You made everything new… Everything, or just what was broken? ‘Cause I’m gettin’ mixed messages with this and I don’t know what to think. My hair was cut when I came outta the ground in Pontiac, but suddenly I wasn’t anymore and… I’m just a little confused, OK?”

Castien hummed and looked at the ceiling; “You’re worried about your penis.” 

“I’m worried about quite a fucking lot actually. This just takes precedence,” He wetted his lips; “I did some things when I was younger, Cas. Things I didn’t want to do. There’s only so much you can do in situations like that and—I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t like it, but I did what I had to do… I just—It didn’t mean anything before. It was just sex… I wanted it to mean something but it didn’t and if it doesn’t count then maybe it still can. Maybe I can have a say in it this time, yanno?”

“I don’t understand.”

Dean threw a hand up over his face and thumped his thigh with his fist; “Just forget it… Forget it,” He rolled away and pulled his knees up, fisted his hands between them and closed himself off, dragged every bit of his grace deep into his chest and squeezed it tight. Defensive and barely holding together. 

“Dean?”

“Go to sleep, Cas.”

He pushed himself up and shifted across the space between the two beds. Sat with his hip pressed into the curve of Dean’s spine and stared at him like he wanted to shake him; “It wasn’t my intention to upset you. I don’t feel things like you do. I don’t understand things like you do. You’ve shared your thoughts and dreams with me since my fall, and you’ve tried to show me the world as you see it, but you forget that I’m not human. I didn’t have a mother, or a childhood. I have no point of reference for most of your emotions. I simply sprang into being and knew everything for what it was around me. There was no mystery or curiosity to fulfill until I found you in Hell,” He rubs the ache in his chest; “Maybe Zechariah was right, maybe you did darken me… But I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing… I want to understand, Dean. Help me understand it so I can help.” 

Dean’s jaw was tight. He shook when he spoke but there was no fire in his tone, there wasn’t much of anything really; “My dad paid a college girl twenty bucks to sleep with me when I was sixteen. I didn’t know he had until after… It was supposed to mean something and it didn’t. It didn’t mean a damned anything… That’s when I knew—That’s when I knew I didn’t mean anything.”

He can tell by the way Dean gives a flinch and curls in on himself that he hadn’t intended to say what he had, Dean was good with his words, it was rare that he let slip more than he intended. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the lack of food. Maybe it was the fact that it was Castiel and something had changed in Dean that made Castiel significant. Maybe something had changed in Castiel that gave him a reason to be.

He couldn’t help but touch, painted lines with his grace across Dean’s shoulders and arms; “You mean something.” 

Dean snorted, but the laugh that followed sounded hollow so he swallowed it, tried to push the angel away. He hunched his shoulders in a little farther but Castiel was determined, crawled onto the bed, all awkward elbows and knees and pressed himself close, pushed all ten fingers palm deep into Dean’s hair. 

Dean didn’t open his eyes for a long while, just laid there listening to Castiel breathe, feeling the gentle rippling of his grace as it settled over him. Felt out the length of his arms, even the two he insisted on keeping folded inside, the warm envelope of his wings as they curled forward around him… The strange electric like sensation just under his skin of his own grace reaching back. 

For some reason, it all seemed to make the ache in his chest worse, the worry and nausea that had been building since his conversation with Sam. He thought he might have to shove away and lunge for the waste basket, but then Castiel’s grip shifted and Dean’s eyes popped open, hands coming up to circle loosely around the angel’s borrowed wrists. 

“I remade your body completely, as I had been instructed to. You came out of the ground in Pontiac whole and untouched, as heaven intended, but you have more than that. You have a choice…” He leaned in slowly and pressed his lips to Dean’s hairline. Completely innocent and given freely without any sort of expectation attached. 

Dean felt the skin of his face and neck redden and heat, wondered distantly how a fucking kiss to the head felt so overwhelming, but then Castiel shifted lower, put another against his lower lip and followed it with a promise that meant worlds;

“It doesn’t count, Dean. It doesn’t count if you don’t want it.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	40. Fancy Footwork

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jessi, I owe you big with this one. Seriously guys, go give Jessi some love she gave me the idea for the case because mine SUCKED! *throws hugs and kisses and candy bars*

  
0-0-0

To his credit, Dean wasn’t exactly shocked into silence and immobility more as he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Castiel lingered, seemed to nuzzle into his cheek as he withdrew and Dean—Dean could do nothing much other than stare and occasionally blink like an idiot.

He could vaguely remember being kissed for the first time as a kid. How the girls had dared one another to do it until one of them had. Then they’d all run screaming when Dean had kissed back. He liked to think that even at six he was progressive because he couldn’t remember a time of thinking girls were ‘icky’ like some boys did. Really, he hadn’t felt ‘icky’ or self-conscious about himself until he’d started puberty. Then? Oh hell no. He remembered for a time he was nothing but aching joints and squeaky voice, that there had suddenly been all this HAIR and an intolerable, insatiable ITCH under his skin.

Inappropriate boners.

Yeah.

Not fun.

Even less so when he was lying there staring at Cas and realized there was a familiar pressure against the front of his jeans.

But Castiel still had a hand on his head, was still petting over his hair, just like Ellen had done. Was staring at Dean’s mouth with an intent look in his eye, almost hungry. Kind of like the look he’d given the whipped cream and strawberries he’d dumped over his waffles on his third trip to the breakfast bar.

Dean felt a little like a tasty bit of food and… well, for a second it wasn’t a bad feeling. He kind of—maybe, sort of, wanted to lean in and see what kind of taste he could leave in Castiel’s mouth, but just as soon as the thought swam through the syrup filling his mind, Dean’s skin prickled with goose flesh and his heart pounded against his ribcage in a manner most unpleasant.

Castiel’s eyes flicked up and when they fell to Dean’s throat there wasn’t any hunger in them, and what heat remained was worry. His hand kept moving, petting over the hunter’s head while the other shifted to press into his chest. The angel breathed out slowly with a sound like Dean’s name.

Something burned in the back of Dean’s throat, down into his stomach—an intolerable, insufferable WANT that ate at his resolve while it scared the hell out of him.  
Just as Castiel seemed to pull back, and the supplicating passes of his hand over Deans hair began to still, the hunter moved. Pushed up and forward in something close to desperation.

This was it. This was the test of tests. If this all really was a new and cruel idea thought up by Alistair, if this really was just another trick, this would be the end of it, for as infinite as Alistair’s patience could be when it came to torture, he simply could not resist Dean when he showed a little bit of enthusiasm or willingness to comply.

Forty years of it and Dean knew this was Alistair’s weakness—

Dean kissed back, none-to-gently, and sagged against Castiel’s chest with a sigh that was almost a cry of relief.

The angel didn’t move. Didn’t change or clutch or tear with sudden blackened claws. He stayed still, barely breathing while Dean breathed into his neck.

There was no demon, there was no retaliation. Castiel didn’t push or try to get more out of him. If anything he went impossibly still in shock of it, and stayed perfectly quiet so all his power could be devoted to discovering exactly what had happened and why.

Like a frozen computer.

Dean snorted in amusement and let his eyes close, felt himself relaxing into the hum of Castiel’s grace. He was asleep before he even really realized what was happening.  
He dreamed.

It wasn’t even a necessarily good dream, just one weekend when he was thirteen and Dad had left him and Sam alone in a hotel room, most likely to go and drink his heart out.  
Sam had a cold and wanted soup, but not tomato and rice. He wanted chicken noodle in the red can like they showed on the TV. And the tiny little hexagonal saltines like they’d had in Maine with all the clam chowder.

Dean had tried to explain that all they had was tomato but Sam would have none of it, sat there in his bed with his nose glowing like fucking Rudolph and his eyes all watery.  
Dean had sighed and yanked on his coat, tried to ignore how it was just a little too short in the sleeves, or that his boots had begun to rub in the toes.

It was snowing, wet ugly heavy snow that froze you to the bone, and Dean had walked five blocks to the Foodland to find the damned soup in the red can and damned little hexagonal crackers.

He was stretching up onto his tiptoes after the fucking bag of crackers, two cans of soup weighing down the saggy pockets of his coat when suddenly there was a hand, bigger—a body, older—looming over him.

Dean drew back, pushed the flaps of his coat back to give the illusion that the weight in the pockets was just wrinkles in the fabric while the guy in the too big flannel got whatever he was after.

Dean had the impression of too blue eyes and a strange sense of déjà vu, but he pushed it down, turned and went for the canned fruit.

“Dean, wait—“

And a hand dropped onto his shoulder.

He flinched, but in that same moment knew, suddenly and without a shadow of a doubt, that he was dreaming.

The rest of the grocery store kept on moving, but Dean stared up at the man curiously, his face not exactly familiar.

“Who are you?”

The man looked hurt for all of half a second, but he straightened his shoulders and spoke carefully; “You’re dreaming.”

“No shit.”

“Sam told me that you needed to learn to lucid dream—“

“Sam? You’ve been messing with my brother?” Part of him felt perfectly insulted, violated—and he wanted to take a swing at this guy and run back to the hotel. The tenuous idea that he was dreaming and not actually experiencing this, slipped a little. Sam, Sam. He had to get back to Sam—

“Dean—“

He jerked against the hand on his arm and kicked the stranger in the shin. Twisted away and ran for it.

He made it halfway to the end of the aisle before the world dissolved around him with the sensation of a hand on his head.

Dean’s eyes opened and he blinked dazedly, saw the room washed out in the colors of evening and Castiel’s borrowed face. Amusement tenting his eyebrows.

Dean wrinkled his nose up and rolled tiredly away, pulled the blankets up over the back of his neck and gave a rumbling growl when Castiel pulled at them plaintively and the angel stopped.

Dean didn’t dream again. He woke a little after four-thirty AM to Sputnik scratching at his shin through the blanket and whining.

Castiel was still out cold so Dean threw on his jacket and shoes without a word and led the dog outside, let her do her business while he surveyed the countryside, the glow of dawn on the horizon. He yawned into his fist and rubbed a hand over his hair, pulled at the curling ends behind his ears and grumbled to himself about what a mess he’d become.

Castiel was still asleep when he and Sputnik made it back to the room so Dean took the time to clean up, scrubbed the dog clean and dried her off, growled back at her when she growled as he scoured her belly and chest and took the blow dryer to her fur.

She really hated blow dryers.

Once dry, she made her ceremonial three counterclockwise circles and hopped up onto the bed at Castiel’s feet with her head on her paws and let Dean have a few moments peace in the shower.

Dean liked showers. The warmer the better most usually. He took the luxury now, tried not to make a big deal out of the glob of conditioner he massaged into his scalp—damned long hair—or the buzz of his new razor as he shaved. He dressed in new, scratchy clothes and pulled stiff new socks over his feet.

Castiel still slept.

He waited until six before he shook the angel awake. Chuckled at the dazed bleary look in his blue eyes and said; “Angels don’t sleep, huh?”  
Castiel looked at him confused, then at the clock and back to Dean, as if the sudden change in time were the human’s fault.

Dean jerked his chin toward the bathroom and took the time to go through his supply of credit cards, rubbed his face worriedly when he realized how close he was to being completely without funds and tucked the extinguished cards into the back of his wallet behind the too thin bills.

Castiel came out of the bathroom in a pair of green and black striped underwear with a towel hanging limp over his dripping hair.

Dean grumbled and scratched the fabric roughly over the angel’s scalp, muttered that he had to learn to wash and dry himself like a human-fucking-being, then snapped the tags off Castiel’s new clothes and boots.

They were on the road not long after that, Dean perching his sunglasses on his nose and humming in tune with the radio.

Castiel said nothing, and it ate at Dean’s every nerve.

“Yanno,” Dean said after an hour of it, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were pissed at me.”

Castiel remained silent.

Dean shook his head and cranked up the radio.

0-0-0

Dean stopped to fill up the gas tank that afternoon and had to toss his last credit card afterward. His stomach made an ugly burbling noise and Castiel glanced at him then quickly away again.

Money.

Dean needed to find a way to get some money… Fast.

He didn’t bother driving until the tank was almost empty, just pulled into the next town and sought out the nearest bar.

No longer on West Virginia hunter land, Dean felt a little more relaxed, Too bad for him the locals weren’t too keen on playing pool or poker with a guy with a service dog.

Virginia, go figure.

He managed to get two-hundred and his mark called it quits. Not drunk enough, or too wary, and Castiel watched him from a booth in the corner, nursing a Shirley Temple some blonde at the bar had sent over to him an hour ago.

Dean had given her a surprisingly sour look and she had backed off damned quick. Then Dean had spent half a pool game contemplating his place in the world while Sputnik sniffed around his ankles under the pool table for dropped Cheetos.

They hit two more bars with not nearly as much luck before it happened.

Dean was lining up his cue when Castiel appeared at his hip.

Dean took his shot and two more, collected his meager winnings and gave Castiel a look with his eyebrow up while the three guys he’d been playing regrouped in the corner to contemplate another game.

Dean almost shat himself when Castiel’s hand appeared out of his jacket pocket fisted around a wad of twenties like it was no big deal.

Dean pushed his hand out of sight between them and pressed in close, hissed into the angel’s ear in panic; “Where the hell did you get that money!”  
Castiel blinked and pointed to the corner of the room near the bathrooms.

Dean imagined some weirdo putting his hands on Castiel’s borrowed body and practically saw red, then noticed the ATM sitting snuggled up into alcove across from the pay phone.

Dean turned and smiled nervously at the rednecks in the corner, said he’d be right back, and pulled Castiel out of the bar with a hand on his wrist.

Sputnik snarled at a group of women who nearly stepped on her little feet with their too high heels and wedged herself between Dean’s feet with her tail tucked.

“Okay,” Dean said and held up Castiel’s fist full of cash; “Spill.”

Castiel pulled his hand free. “You’ve been worried about your fraudulent credit cards all day—“

Dean choked loudly, hoping to cover up the sound of Castiel’s voice, shot him a warning look and pushed forward hoping to get the message across. _SHUT UP! YOU’LL GET ME ARRESTED!_

Castiel’s brows pulled down—and he pushed back; **There are other ways of getting money that don’t involve such convoluted measures.**

And Dean heard him.

He stood there staring with a gob smacked look on his face for close to fifteen seconds before he even realized what had just happened. “Dude— Did you just…” He twirled a finger at his ear.

“I thought that was how you wanted to communicate.”

Dean took half a step back, “You can…” Confusion wasn’t a good look for him. It pursed his lips and squinted his eyes and Sam had often told him that he looked constipated. “Since when can you talk in my head?”

“I’ve only just managed to find a wavelength that allows me to. Human minds are very fragile if I’d tried speaking through the wrong one I could have killed you.”

Dean’s head bobbed nervously; “Oh… well, thanks for not exploding my head.”

“You’re welcome.”

A man and woman, both a little too drunk and giggly staggered out of the bar, all hands and unbuttoned shirts and Dean stepped out of their way as they staggered past, shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned his hip against the rail by the steps; _So, uh… Testing. Testing, one-two-three._

**What are you testing? I can hear you clearly.**

Dean rubbed his face; _This is worse than texting. I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. Are you being sarcastic?_

**No.**

_Okay, right… I don’t like this. I can’t tell what tone you’re using unless I focus. I think I like texting better._ He sighed, hand still over his mouth and gave Castiel a long up and down look, as if he were still freaked out over the idea, but was becoming more and more accustomed to the growing amount of bullshit in his diet. _Okay, so how did you get that money without doing something illegal?_

**There are other ways.**

_Yeah? Like what? Rob a bank? Got mixed up in one of those once, didn’t turn out too good._

**I could teach you. You showed me how to taste food, it would be an equivalent exchange.**

_You’re equating tasting pancake syrup with a way to get money without hustling or fraud? Sure why not. Share your Jedi skills, oh Master._

Castiel waited until Dean climbed behind the wheel before he gave directions. Had Dean pull across the street to the gas station and sidle the car up to the ATM on the corner.

They approached the machine warily. Dean had cultivated a strange fear of ATMs since the mid-nineties when he’d bought a card reader off the back of some redneck’s truck and managed to rig it up with a dead credit card Dad had thrown into the footwell of the Impala after it had been declined at a gas station. He remembered Dad coming in and finding Dean with his machine and a stack of fifties and throwing a fit. “There are cameras in those damn things, Dean! Now they’ve got your picture!”

He hadn’t liked messing with them since.

Castiel seemed to have no such fear. He led Dean to the machine as if what they were doing was absolutely normal and innocent.

“I bet you have a killer poker face,” Dean exhaled and tapped his knuckles against his leg. “What do I do?”

“It’s all electricity,” Castiel had a card, one of the possibly dead ones Dean had in the glove box. He turned it over and ran his thumb over the little black strip; “This contains a magnetic signature, the machine reads it, connects to a computer, and verifies the signature with the bank.”

Dean’s brows pulled down. “I know how an ATM card works.”

Castiel held the card out and Dean reached for it— But the angel didn’t let go.

“Cas—“

Castiel nudged him with one of his invisible arms and Dean pulled a little harder.

“Feel it. I’ll show you.”

He sighed, rolled his eyes and shut them, stood there passively like an idiot gripping Castiel’s card and waited to FEEL anything.

“You’re being obtuse.”

“Shut up,” He fed a little of his grace into the card, felt out the magnetic strip and a tendril of Castiel’s grace guided his own, focused on what was imprinted upon it. In his mind he saw it like an alien topography. Hills and valleys, almost like braille.

Castiel’s grace pulled him forward and he became aware of a pattern, blips—Binary.

“You focus on the signature when you put the card into the machine. See what it reads and what it doesn’t. When you find the section of code that involves the balance, you manipulate it. The grace will override the bank’s computer and change the balance.”

“Grace trumps computers. Got it.”

“Or, you can do this,” Castiel tugged the card away, turned to the machine and jabbed a finger as far as it would go into the card slot. The machine made a series of distressed sounding beeping noises and spat out a fistful of hundreds.

Dean very nearly shat himself and yanked Castiel by the collar back to the Impala and shoved him inside. His head was frantic and Castiel just sat there holding the money up like a fucking ice cream cone until Dean cut onto the berm at the side of the highway and took it from him.

“How did you do that? How the hell did you do that?” He counted it with shaking hands and wide eyes.

Castiel gave his head an exasperated shake; “Just like I told you, it’s all electricity!”

Dean stared at him, blinked, and stared some more.

Castiel stared back.

Dean glanced down at the cash in his hands, felt a weird butterfly flutter in his stomach—something like glee and took the ATM card when Castiel held it up.

“Your turn.”

0-0-0

Dean took out a hotel room that night. Not because he needed it, but because he could.

Then he sprawled himself on the bed closest the window with the blind and curtains pulled tightly shut, turned the TV on to something mind numbing and filled with perky breasts and weepy blondes in hospital beds and cultivated the irrational urge to strip naked and roll around in all the fifties and twenties and crisp hundred dollar bills he and Castiel had pilfered from ATM machines.

Dean Winchester had never been in a position in his life where money was not an object for worry or anxiety. There was always that fear that he wouldn’t be able to afford food, or a warm place to sleep or a full tank of gas. There was always that fear that he wouldn’t be able to buy off a witness and end up getting someone killed because he didn’t have the right information.

He had always heard that money couldn’t buy happiness, but he was pretty damned sure the person who came up with that saying had lots of money because forty-eight hundred dollars seemed to make Dean pretty damned happy, thank you very much.

He laughed. A quiet kind of sound because he didn’t want anyone to hear him, but it was definitely a laugh.

Castiel looked up from the other bed and squinted in confusion. “Why are you laughing?”

Dean patted all the money into neat stacks only to smear and scatter it over the sheet beside him, just to sort and stack all over again.

Maybe he’d gone a little crazy, his grace was abuzz in his body and part of him—some anxiety ridden part who would never be able to accept that sometimes good shit happened, just wanted to go out and find a few more ATMs just in case. Just in case something happened and this was only a fluke. The good in the world never lasted, you had to take everything you could get while you could get it or risk doing without in the long run.

Castiel shook his head, privy to Dean’s louder than normal thoughts and turned back to the television.

Dean stacked the money one last time. All the heads facing one direction, all in serial order, Alphabetical as to where it had been printed. Was tempted to scatter it again, but some whacko on the TV barged into the hospital with a gun and started waving it around, saying he wasn’t going anywhere until his kid got the lung, heart and kidney transplant he needed to stay alive. That he would shoot one person every thirty minutes until his kid was under the knife.

Dean wondered, absently, what it would have been like to have a father like that. Someone who would have gone a little crazy and threatened to shoot people to keep you safe and healthy instead of frequently using Dean as bait for the monster of the week. He snorted and counted out some cash to stick in his wallet, asked with his eyes only halfway on the screen where Castiel had put Jimmy’s wallet and stuffed a couple hundred in there as well. The rest he folded carefully and hid in various pockets on his new duffle and Castiel’s, or in an empty pill bottle in the emergency bag.

The screen changed and the kid was under the knife, the guy with the gun holding some brunette young doctor woman hostage on the other side of the operating room glass while some scruffy doctor in the OR pointed into the kid’s cracked chest.

“I nicked his aorta, he’ll bleed out in just a few minutes unless you let her go!”

The guy with the gun was wild eyed, pulled the brunette’s hair and tore her blouse, but finally relented, the doctor went back to his surgery and the police dragged the gunman away.

The scene cut again and the brunette was watching this scruffy looking jackass doctor talk to the police while some female indie pop singer crooned slightly off key in the background. She approached him and asked if he’d really nicked the kid’s aorta and he looked off into the middle distance and said some shit about not betraying his oath, that words weren’t just words, and a life was worth everything—

Dean snorted and rolled his eyes, pushed up from his bed and shrugged into his jacket; “You hungry?”

Castiel tore his eyes from the TV screen and nodded slowly.

Dean grinned; “Good, come on.”

0-0-0

As far as diners went Fran’s was cleaner than most. Newer, and all the dishes matched, none of the cups were chipped or cracked and the menus were bound in little plastic folders with a cartoon buxom brunette on the front balancing a tray of burgers and fries above her animated head.

Fran herself was their server. A woman in her mid-forties she had a smile and a complementary cup of coffee for both of them.

She wasn’t dressed like one would expect, or more precisely, like Dean expected. She wore a t-shirt with the same grinning cartoon version of herself on it and jeans under a plain black apron with a few extra pencils sticking out of the pocket and a clean rag in her waistband.

Her husband, Earl, was the cook and when Dean and Castiel slid into a booth in the corner Earl was behind the counter humming ‘Old Gray Mare’ while he slid pie pans into a glass case beside the register.

Dean was salivating even before Fran came over with their free coffee.

No burgers for Dean, no grilled cheese or bacon and eggs.

“Pie… And keep it coming.”

Fran’s mouth turned up at the corner playfully, “Shouldn’t you two have dinner first?”

Dean gave Castiel a look; “Do you want dinner, Cas? They serve breakfast all day.”

Castiel looked up at Fran sheepishly and shook his head; “I ate too many waffles last time.”

She laughed quietly and nodded, made a note on her order pad and asked if there was anything else they needed.

Dean stipulated the possibility of more coffee and a glass of water to take his pills.

Fran nodded and gave Sputnik a sideways look but seemed to take the obedient way she stayed at Dean’s heel into consideration and said nothing.

Dean waited until Fran was gone before he propped his jaw on his fist; “Need to get Sputs a new vest… I’m getting tired of all the looks.”

Castiel was mixing copious amounts of sugar into his coffee.

Fran came back a moment later with two glasses of milk and two dishes of pie, winked and said; “Raisin, first. My great grandmother’s recipe.”

Dean stared at it for a few seconds, turned his fork over and over between his fingers and watched Castiel stab the tines of his own into the gooey filling and lick it clean.

There wasn’t pie in hell, not in the traditional sense. Not in the sense that whatever it was down there was in any way sweet or pleasant smelling or had such fucking beautiful flakey crust.

Sweet Lord it was even still warm.

Dean ate… And when Fran appeared with round two; ‘Strawberry Rhubarb’ Dean ate that too. And the peach that held just the slightest hint of cloves. The blackberry cobblerwith ice cream heaped and melting over it. The pumpkin and apple and peanutbutter—

Castiel made a noise two bites into the peanutbutter, a low growling sound and Dean looked up with his eyebrow raised, found the angel’s blue eyes were rolled back in his head and there were crumbs on his prickly chin.

Dean almost laughed, smothered it in a long swallow of milk and kept eating.

Castiel took the plate of pecan right out of Fran’s hands and dug in with relish.

Earl had come out of the back and was perched on a bar stool beside another patron who had stuck around to watch, sipping his own coffee.

It seemed they had become somewhat of a spectacle. Earl speculated they were some of those food critics, his friend said they were probably just stoners. Fran hit them both with her drying rag and shook her head.

Dean ate. He ate until the ache in his belly wasn’t from emptiness or anxiety but because there was just not enough room to continue, and even after that he sat there nursing his coffee and watching Castiel continue. He watched until he knew if he didn’t stop the angel there would be another waffle incident and when Fran got up from her stool he gave her a discrete wave and she bobbed her head in understanding.

It was a good feeling, one Dean hadn’t had in a long while. Heavy but not in a bad way. He wasn’t sure what changed it from every other time he’d eaten something and become aware of its weight within him, but he wasn’t going to push and wind up making himself sick. Not today. He had a full wallet, a tank of gas and a nice view of Castiel licking his fork clean, a little speck of whipped cream stuck to the corner of his lips.

Everything seemed right with the world.

Dean breathed in and out and left a twenty on the table as a tip, paid the bill and smiled when Earl came out of the back carrying a pie tin covered in foil and said it was a few burger patties for ‘the dog’.

Sputnik, as if she understood what was happening, licked her fuzzy lips repeatedly and danced in counterclockwise circles, stumpy little legs trembling.

Dean bought a newspaper as they were leaving and once back at the hotel rolled onto his bed and flipped through it.

Castiel sprawled himself and rubbed gingerly at his belly through his shirt, murmured tiredly about the virtues of peanutbutter pie while Sputnik chewed happily on her burger patties, had one pinned between her front paws so it wouldn’t run away, eyes glazed and content.

There was nothing in the newspaper, just like there had been nothing for the past week and a half. Some celebrity had a sex tape, some senator took a bribe.

Dean threw the paper into the corner and writhed a little under his skin from the inactivity.

Sputnik jumped onto the bed by his hip and wriggled around, leaving her doggie scent all over his leg and hand. He nudged her away when she started licking herself loudly and grumbled about how unsanitary dog spit was.

To which Castiel replied that dog spit was naturally antibacterial and her mouth was cleaner than Dean’s.

Dean went to brush his teeth when he came back out Castiel was dozing on his bed and the doctor show from the night before was back on. Something about a ‘best of’ marathon in preparation for the next season. Dean spent three hours cleaning his weapons and bundling his new underwear, socks and t-shirts together and if by the end of those three hours he had begun to fantasize about cowboy boots nobody was the wiser.

0-0-0

Dean had a fantasy. To look at him and take into consideration his past, one would think it involved lesbians and busty women in corsets. To a certain extent, one would be correct. Dean found the female form attractive, more specifically he found a powerful female form attractive. Women who could give as good as they took, strong thighs and gnashed teeth between candy red lips.

Yes, Mistress… mmmm.

But, Dean had another fantasy, one a person couldn’t see just by looking at him and hearing his reputation.

Dean, in the time since he’d popped his first boner in gym class at twelve, had come to appreciate something not quite as soft and curvy as a female’s waist in corsetry. Maybe Rhonda Hurley had something to do with it, maybe it was entirely to do with the Djinn or the tax accountant in drag who’d given Dean the best blowjob of his life during Mardi Gras.

Whatever it was that sparked the fantasy, it was Castiel that gave it a face and this, in itself, made Dean feel like a teenager again.

Castiel slept like nobody had ever told him the dangers in it. He just kind of lolled boneless against the mattress with his hands resting on his stomach and murmured his way through a dream.

Dean wondered what it was angels dreamed about, related it to what Sputnik must dream about because whenever her paws twitched against his shin Castiel made a soft grunting noise.

Maybe Castiel couldn’t dream on his own and his psyche just latched on to whatever was closest to him and dreaming. Maybe he was dog shaped in his head now and Sputnik was teaching him the right way to play tug-of-war. Dean hid a grin in his bicep and tugged the blanket higher over his shoulder. Part of him wanted to reach out and see If he could Connect with Castiel’s mind like this, see if he could eavesdrop on whatever conversation the angel and the dog seemed to be having.

Sputnik snorted loudly and raised her head sneezing, put her teeth to the crest of her hip to nip at a flea and sprawled out again.

Castiel’s face changed, pinched and relaxed and he went still.

Maybe the spell was broken and Castiel was stuck in blackness now, waiting for something, someone—

Dean’s hand moved without conscious effort, slid over the pillows he’d propped between them and formed itself to Castiel’s temple, felt a subtle twitch of energy.

Angels don’t sleep, Castiel had said. What a load of shit.

Dean knew it was weird, knew it was damned near stalkerish, but he couldn’t help himself, every time he looked at him there was something new, some little freckle his mind latched on to and said ‘I remember that!’ or a shallow crater of some faded acne scar along Castiel’s borrowed cheekbone.

Dean likened the sensation to the one he’d had counting all the money he’d taken from the ATMs. Excitement and nervous energy. Fear that he would be caught and rebuked for his desires—and the near overwhelming NEED to touch and reassert Castiel’s physical presence, stolen though it may be. Dean Winchester was a creature of solidity and firmament, as much as he may deny it, what he could see and touch and interact with kept him grounded and right now it felt like he wanted to fly apart because this—THIS.  
Castiel was asleep beside him with his prickly jaw tucked into Dean’s hand and a serious case of bed head.

For a moment Dean could fantasize, could pretend that nothing else existed. That the djinn world had been reality and he’d fixed it.

Castiel’s brows knitted and his hands flexed in search of something, grace reaching out all around him as if stretching. It found Dean’s edges and drew him in, just wrapped neatly around him and pulled him in. Warmth, more than physical, so much more than physical. Dean felt it seep into all his cracks and crevasses and fill them up. All the ugly horrid places filled with nightmarish faces and deeds done in the pit that he couldn’t breathe into life out of it.

Dean felt stupid, but welcomed it. Wanted it, the relief it gave was worth any kind of humiliation he would later heap upon himself.

Fuck it. Something inside him said. Fuck it all.

He tilted his head, found Castiel’s clavicle with his brow and didn’t resist when the angel’s stolen arms flopped inelegantly over him, or that Cas hiccupped in his sleep a few times before settling.

It ached in his chest and part of him wanted to bite something because it was just afuckingdorable and how pathetic was that?

He didn’t sleep, didn’t know if he could truthfully, his body was thrumming with memories that weren’t really memories. Kisses and cold winter days pressed together on the couch.

Dean built a life around his little domestic fantasy, let himself sink into it and when Castiel’s grace reached for the ideas, he pulled them back, tucked them deep and tried not to feel selfish.

0-0-0

West. West was good.

No cases? Fine, Dean would cut a swathe across the continental US and hit every ATM he came to until he figured out how Castiel had done that finger trick.

“It’s Mork and Mindy bullshit, that’s what it is,” He said, shaking out his arms. “You go up to it and you’re all ‘Nanunanu’ and I might as well be sticking gum in the damned thing.”

Castiel gave him a curious look, confused and perhaps a little afraid.

Dean shook his head, exhaled noisily and approached the machine as if it were a hive of bees. He knew where the camera was, focused on it and pushed into it with a little grace, just like Castiel had shown him, blocked the signal… Then shook his hand out again and pressed a finger as far as it would go into the card slot, squeezed his eyes closed and PUSHED.

The machine made a distressed beeping noise and an electric current rushed up Dean’s arm, ricocheted around his elbow and made for his eye socket. He jerked his hand back, insulted, took a deep breath to steady himself and started again.

Slowly. Castiel had said to go SLOWLY.

Dean wanted to add a few hundred bucks to his wallet like NOW.

His hand ached from the shock but he tried again, found the current and visualized himself opening locks. Open. OPENOPENOPENOPEN—

Older ATMs made a sound when money hit the tray, kind of like Sputnik’s kibble rattled in her bowl. Dean heard the first clicks and put the preverbal pedal to the floor.  
Sputnik yapped from somewhere around his ankles and pulled hard on her lead.

“Easy, Sputs, almost d—“

Dean saw a blur from the corner of his eye, something black and white with icy blue eyes and the next second Sputnik was a wild thing at the end of her lead, barking and wriggling all over, practically choking herself in an attempt to get at whatever that thing was—

Dean’s focus slipped and the money stopped flowing. He muttered a curse and fisted the cash, turned quickly away from the machine and found Sputnik ass to nose with another dog.

It was smaller, some froufrou little Chihuahua thing with big ears and spindly legs.

Dean rubbed his brow; “Really? This is a formal greeting? I thought Sam taught you to shake han—“

And then the little black and white dick tried to climb on top of her and Dean knew just enough about dogs and sex and dog sex to feel insulted on both their behalves and he gave the lead a sharp tug, bent forward and snarled at the little purse pervert.

“HEY!”

The dog made a series of yipping noises like Dean had kicked its head half in and ran away with its tail between its legs.  
Sputnik snorted indignantly and kicked her hind feet.

Dean watched the Chihuahua run then glanced over at Castiel where he was leaning against the rear fender of the car waiting for the gas to stop flowing. “Did you see that shit!”He bent and picked Sputnik up, tucked her to his chest. “That little bastard was—“

Castiel raised an eyebrow; “She is a bitch, Dean.”

His mouth came open; “She is not!”

“She is an unmated female dog—“

Dean blinked rapidly, scandalized and opened the car door, put Sputnik inside and announced that he had to piss.

When he exited the bathroom Castiel was waiting, eyes narrowed chin jutted forward.

Dean took a moment to breathe; “Personal space, Cas, really. Work on it.”

“I’m trying.”

Fifty dollars in sugary snacks and a hundred in gas later and Dean’s ripping into a Snickers bar, head in the clouds—

Until he sees a dangling red strap hanging out the passenger window of the Impala. A dangling red strap on which is a very empty black leather collar, complete with a shiny little pentagram.

Dean froze, blinks, and dropped his bag of snacks.

The window—Of fucking course. Sputnik had climbed out the window once before to come after him, why hadn’t—

“Oh, crap,” Dean turned in a complete circle, scanned the pumps and the parking lot, even the little grassy lot behind the gas station, but there was nothing. Not even that annoying little dick of a Chihuahua. “Sputnik!”

A large man in a trucker cap two pumps over looked up, snorted and shook his head.

Dean dropped to his knees and peered under the car, under the adjacent cars and nudgeed Castiel toward the road; “Go—She couldn’t have gone far.”  
Castiel nodded, seemed somehow unconcerned even as he scrunched his face in worry, like the translator in his head wasn’t quite dialed in correctly. He stood completely still and went somehow even more vacant than normal. Dean felt the hum of him diminish and blinked stupidly for all of three seconds, "Yeah, thanks, Cas... You just, yeah." 

Dean walked around the building calling, whistling, cursing and shaking the bag of Doritos he’d managed to hold on to in hopes of enticing her to show her face.

But there was nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Castiel returned to himself with a shake of his head and Dean felt a little like he wanted to puke. He stormed back into the building and bullied the attendant into seeing the security footage. Sure enough, there was Sputnik squeezing her way out the window—FLOP—down she goes, lead caught on the door handle. She struggles frantically with it for a few seconds and slips right out of her collar. Bumps her butt on the ground and shakes it off like a champ. Kicks her feet as if ridding them of dust, and takes off toward the bushes.

Dean felt like his heart was about to explode. He shook his head in denial, snuffed and rubbed a fist angrily under his nose. Then he went outside and climbed over the guardrail and continued looking.

The bushes gave way to a prickly thicket of green briar and thorn but Dean kicked his way through most of it, followed the little trail of tiny dog prints in the mud to a stream and finally into a wooded area behind a housing development, then all signs stopped.

He walked back to the gas station after an hour of prowling the neighborhood to no avail, with his head hung low.

Castiel and the gas station attendant were waiting, but there was no sign of Sputnik.

Castiel stayed at the gas station while Dean took the car on a circuit through the city, window rolled down, heart in his throat every time there was a curve, afraid to see a crumpled little furry body in the ditch. He didn’t want to admit it but he’d become attached to the dog. As annoying as she was sometimes, her presence did actually help. She was an ear to talk to, a constant when he needed an anchor, a fuzzy, stinky little ball of fuzz to lick his face when he didn’t want her to.

There was nothing.

Dean was not one to let go of things easily. He held grudges and it took an act of god to pull him off a trail, even one that has gone cold. He pulled in to the first motel he saw and took out a single, circled back to the gas station and picked up Castiel.

The attendant tried to persuade him to just leave it, that he would call the local animal control to keep an eye out for her and Dean’s lips rolled back from his teeth.

“I’m not leaving without my dog!”

Dean took the first ‘watch’. Walked from the hotel to the gas station, through the housing development and back twice. The EMF detector had a constant base read from the power lines and from Dean’s grace, but there were no spikes.

Every time he heard a dog barking his heart lurched.

Every time his flashlight caught the glinting eyes of some night creature, he was sure she would come bounding out of the underbrush…

Dean called Sam, sat on the curb beside the Impala with his head in his hand and said words he didn’t think he would ever have to say;

“I lost Sputnik.”

“You what?” Sam sounded exhausted.

“She got out of the car, slipped her collar and vanished… I’ve been looking for hours and I can’t find her.”

“Dean, man… I’m sorry.”

“Why would she just run off like that?”

“She’s a dog, who knows how they think.”

“Cas.”

Sam huffed; “Cas is the exception… Where are you? Rufus and Bobby are heading back out to South Dakota, maybe they can swing by and help you look?”

Dean knew it was a fool’s hope, Sputnik was one little dog and the world was very big, forget about all the supernatural creatures that could have n—

He saw her from the corner of his eye, seemingly all white under the orange glow of the streetlamp. She’s just THERE, looking around curiously. She yawns and lapped at a mud puddle, smacked her lips and shook all over.

Dean wanted to break something. Wanted to throw things and shake her and all he ends up doing is shouting. “SPUTNIK!”

She flinches visibly, turns wide eyes to him and lowers herself on her haunches a little. When Dean came to his feet she skittered back a few paces, wary—until he dropped to his knees and called to her again, whistled low and put on a smile.

“Sputs! Sputs, where’d you go, huh?”

She lowered her chin and tilted her head, ears perked.

“Come on, Sputs—that’s my girl, come on!” She seemed to hesitate, huffed in a few deep breaths and whuffed them out, trotted forward carefully until Dean could get his hands on her.

Her fur was slimy and wet and she smelled like a sewer. Dean didn’t care, he scooped her up and huffed a quiet laugh into his phone; “Found her… I found her.”

0-0-0

Castiel had found something on TV that interested him but Dean wasn’t paying attention. He was on his knees in the motel bathroom wrist deep in shampoo bubbles and wet dog smell.

Sputnik was blinking at him with wide eyes as he scoured her from head to foot, hummed a little Zeppelin, a little Riverside Blues—and massaged all the loamy soil from her feet and belly.

He talked, prattled on and on like some waif on a sugar high and all the while she just stared at him. He sneezed a few times, decided she must have gotten into some kind of mold or something and kept scrubbing.

He chalked it up to shock. She’d been just as scared as he was to lose her. That had to be it. Why else would she let him rub her down with a towel without complaint. Why else would she stand there shivering slightly while he used the blow dryer instead of trying to eat the damned thing like she normally did.

Why else would she jump right onto the bed and ignore her towel when Dean shook it at her.

Castiel squinted at her, flared his nostrils and gave Dean a strange look. “That’s not Sputnik.”

Dean gaped at him; “What the hell are you talking about! Look at her!” He motioned to her with the flat of his hand; “How many blonde corgis are there?”

“More than you realize… That isn’t Sputnik.”

Dean hesitated, looked her up and down and shook his head; “No, no way… Cas, you’re—“

“I know souls, Dean… I may not be able to see hers, but I can feel it, and I promise you, that is not Sputnik.”

Dean shook himself again, squared his shoulders and narrowed his eyes at her—Sputnik was all gold at the edges, like honey and vanilla and—

This dog was not Sputnik.

Dean felt violated.

The color flickering around the dog’s edges was brown. Dark brown with a hint of green.

“Not Sputnik… That—that’s—“

“Exactly,” Castiel nodded slowly and turned to the dog with a serious expression on his face. “So, who is she.”

Dean went at the dog with both hands raised, indignant that he had been so easily tricked—only for the dog’s eyes to widen further and further—too far and—

_**SPLAT!** _

Dean froze in his tracks, face scrunched in disgust, horror and revulsion. He’d seen his share of road kill, but never—NEVER—

Behind him Castiel made a surprised little ‘Huh’ noise.

And on the bed, where the Sputnik look alike had been, was now a writhing mass of bloody mucus, and off white tentacles covered in short fur, and two bulbous, watery eyes.

Dean shuddered and whipped the slime from his face. “Awesome.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	41. No One Broken Can't Be Fixed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hope this is worth the wait, guys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Erin and Paul for helping me edit this thing.  
> I hope to have more soon, but I'm not really sure. I've been very very sick and there is school to contend with, but know, I will not EVER abandon this unless I like, die in a horrible car crash or something, so... yeah.

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

It took Rufus and Bobby nine hours to get there. Nine hours Dean spent sitting in a chair staring at the creature that had once looked like a dog.

Bobby took one look at the thing in the bucket and lifted his hands; “I’m out!”

Dean gaped.

“I can handle a lot of crap, but I draw the line at tentacle monsters,” Bobby braced himself up against the wall with his hands tucked under his arms.

Rufus snorted and looked down into the bucket with a somehow tender expression on his face; “Aw, nasty little fucker aren’t you.”

“Mind telling me what it is?” Dean rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. “And what happened to Sputnik.”

Rufus grunted and picked up the bucket, sat it on the table and pointed at the wriggling mass inside; “That is one nasty son-of-a-bitch. I went up against one of these things in ninety-four, me and a fellow by the name of Barrymore. Nasty’d killed six people, of course, that one was a lot bigger than this one.”

Dean tilted his chin up; “What. Is. It. And WHERE is my dog?”

Rufus dipped his head to the side; “Probably eaten… What you’ve got here is a Xuphrek… Animal shifter… Any kind of animal that it gets a DNA sample of, it can turn into, no if’s and’s or but’s.”

Dean felt his blood run cold. “People?”

Rufus cocked an eyebrow at him; “It fits in a bucket, how the hell is it going to turn into a person?”

Castiel shifted on his feet; “The size difference alone would alert the authorities of its supernatural origins. This particular creature is an infant, it’s incapable of holding a foreign shape when stressed. It wouldn’t have been able to overtake Sputnik on its own.”

Rufus nodded, “Which means you’ve probably got a damned nest of them.”

“And exactly how do you kill these things?” Dean tipped the bucket up and sneered at the creature inside.

“Barrymore and me roasted them… Kerosene and a match. They pop like crabs in a pot.”

The Xuphrek in the bucket made a distressed sounding noise and hid behind its tentacles, gummy mouth open in a hiss.

Dean rolled his lips back from his teeth and snarled back at it; “So, you’re telling me a bigger one of these things got Sputnik?”

Rufus shrugged; “Look, I’m sorry about your dog, but these things happen—“

Dean shook his head, snuffed wetly and shook his head again. “No,” He pushed to his feet and grabbed up his duffle; “You have fun with Cthulhu Junior, I’m gonna go find my dog.”

“Dean—“ Castiel took a deep breath and let it out. “You’re in no condition to go out alone. These creatures can be exceptionally large, you—“ He stopped, gave his head a shake and pushed to his feet. “I’ll go with you.”

Dean didn’t wait for him, just pushed open the door and stormed out.

Castiel took a deep breath and let it out, looked down at the creature in the bucket in something close to sympathy and followed Dean.

Rufus made a kissing noise at the Xuphrek then looked up at Bobby. “What I don’t understand is why one so young is out on its own.”

Bobby craned his neck and peered in at the tangle of fur covered tentacles with a sneer; “What’a you got in mind?”

Rufus was quiet, tapped his foot as he thought; “Something isn’t right about this. Xuphrek don’t let their young just wander around. They’re highly protective, I mean, it doesn’t even have any teeth yet…”

“Teeth?”

“Like needles… Full of venom, paralytic. Burns like hellfire,” He dipped a hand into the bucket and caught a tentacle, drew on it carefully while the Xuphrek warbled uncertainly, “When the prey is bigger it numbs first, then you go down, unable to move, it comes in with all its young. Maybe they’re in animal shape, maybe they’re like this. And they eat you slow… Small, animal sized, one hit with these things breaks the neck, then it’s down the hatch like a snake.”

Bobby sneered.

Rufus made a surprised noise and reached for another tentacle, “Take a look at that?”

“At what?” Bobby didn’t want to really look at the thing.

“There’s a scar here… Look.”

Bobby glanced down and noticed a series of puckered lines across the beast’s head and the body of a forward tentacle. “Claw marks?”

Rufus hummed noncommitally and let the Xuphrek wrap its two captive tentacles around his hand.

Bobby snorted; “You gonna play with it or kill it, Rufus.”

“Why do I wanna kill it? Far as I know it hasn’t done anything but maybe eat Dean’s dog.”

“You’re not thinking of keeping the damned thing, are you!”

Rufus straightened his back and lifted both brows at Bobby; “Why the hell would I want to keep a Xuphrek for a pet! You think I’m crazy?”

“Yes.”

Rufus snorted and turned back to the Xuphrek; “Not that crazy,” He turned over the hand wrapped in tentacles and stared at the scars on the creature’s side for a moment; “There’s just something not right about this is all.”

0-0-0

Dean didn’t get in the car. He stomped across the road to the corner where the SputNOT had been, bag of weapons banging at his shin, and shone a flashlight over the guardrail from whence the creature had come.

The hillside fell away and merged with a copse of trees and bushes that stretched into a swampy bottom area bordered on the left with a forest, beyond which was the housing development and the gas station. And on the right by a disturbed area of what had once been more swamp but would likely soon become another housing development.

A car passed, then another, early commuters on their way to the city.

Cas noticed it in the play of headlights as the cars passed, nudged Dean’s shoulder with the back of his hand and pointed. Dean looked up, eyebrows raised in hope that the real Sputnik had appeared as suddenly as the fake one had, but there was no fuzzy face , just a line of soggy ‘Lost Dog’ and ‘Lost Cat’ signs stapled at eye height on every power pole until the road curved out of sight.

Dean blinked, looked around with his mouth hanging open and after a moment of surveying the vicinity and the massive collection of lost pet posters, Dean jogged to the nearest set and peered at the faded, rain smudged images.

The torn wedges of paper still clinging to rusted staples littering the pole was the only evidence left of more posters either torn away by the wind or taken down by the disparaging owners.

Dean peered down the road in shock, turned to Castiel and wetted his lips; “How big do these things get again?”

“They never stop growing, as long as there is an abundance of food, they will grow.”

“So,” Dean made a tumbling motion with his finger, “Are we talking lion or… or whale size here.”

Castiel peered down the road at all the signs, gauged their approximate age and leveled his gaze at Dean. “With so many small pets available so close, it’s likely the size of an automobile by now.”

“Okay, so a giant dog eating squid… Not too bad,” He snuffed and motioned with his flashlight toward the swamp. “Not a lot of places to hide something that size.”

He was wrong.

Very, very wrong. Dean didn’t know much about squid, other than you can eat it dipped in soy sauce or fried and daubed with wasabi. Sea creatures other than the supernatural ones, and the ones that could be eaten, didn’t pique his interest much. Unless it was sharks, shark week rocked. But Dean didn’t know much about octopi or squid, and when Castiel had said ‘automobile’ sized, he imagined a creature that would retain that size, not one that could excrete massive amounts of water and compact itself down to the size of a Saint Bernard, or wriggle its way into a storm drain.

After four hours of tracking dog and cat footprints through the mud, three falls into slimy swamp water and a close encounter with a snake, Dean gave up. Shook the dampness from his phone and called Bobby.

Rufus laughed. Out loud. Threw back his head and released his mirth to the rafters.

Dean wasn’t amused, and if the flushed, sagging appearance of the angel standing grumpily a dozen or so feet away, he would have to say Castiel wasn’t amused either.

“Sewers!” Rufus said between chuckles. “They live in sewers!”

Castiel argued, quite loudly, that they lived in flooded caves, swamps and bogs.

“Maybe a thousand years ago, things evolve. What they were back then and what they are now are two different things.”

Castiel narrowed his eyes and the phone line crackled ominously.

“Creatures go where the food is, they adapt.”

Dean ended the call with a sigh and rubbed sweat from his brow, blinked up at the sun and shook his head. “You know, this isn’t how I wanted to be spending my Saturday.”

“You wanted a case.”

“Yeah, but not a case that involved me crawling around in a fucking sewer at noon.”

“We could come back—“

“I’m not leaving without my dog.”

And Castiel made a noise, an exasperated kind of upset scoffing noise in the back of his throat, Dean had never heard him make a sound like that before, turned and found the angel standing there with his hands on his hips and four of his six non-physical ones crossed indignantly.

“What?”

Castiel visibly bristled and the air around him felt charged.

“Cas, what?”

“I can’t feel her.”

Dean took a step closer; “And?”

“If I can’t feel her, it’s likely she is no longer—“

Dean leveled a finger in the angel’s face; “Don’t… You just shut up, and look again. She’s not dead.”

“Dean—“

“She isn’t dead.”

“I can find anybody, anywhere, at any time. There are very few ways to shield a soul from the sight of an angel—“

“Says the blind angel.”

Castiel’s stolen eyebrows shot up and for a second Dean could have sworn he saw a flicker like static on clothes pulled from the drier. Like maybe Castiel’s true form was attempting to make itself known. It itched along his optic nerves and he shook his head to clear his vision; “You said angels don’t sleep… But you were doing a damned good impression of Rip Van Winkle this morning, Cas. Why is that? Maybe you don’t know as much about what you’re capable of as you thought you did.”

Castiel flinched. Dean couldn’t see it, but he felt it in his chest. Like a fist knocking on his ribs. He hefted his bag higher on his shoulder and started walking.

Another hour passed before Dean found the road again, he didn’t climb the embankment to walk on the sidewalk, but followed it parallel to the south, toward the gas station.

And then there was a noise. A yapping bark.

There were no footprints, no paw prints, but when Dean crouched and peered beneath some laurels there was a shivering black and white form with ice blue eyes.

Dean sneered; “You again?”

The Chihuahua whined and limped backward a few paces.

Dean breathed out slowly and gave the little dog a long hard stare. The dog was red at the edges, darker than Sam, dingier, and it kept its spindly tail tucked between its shivering back legs.

“That’s a dog, Dean.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

Dean reached for the Chihuahua, only for the dog to snarl viciously and run at him with its hackles up and a mouth full of tiny sharp teeth.

Dean rolled out of the way with a curse and the dog got a mouthful of hair, it spat and snarled and took off when Dean grabbed at it again.

He huffed out a breath and turned to lift an eyebrow at Castiel; “A dog, really.”

“A very angry dog.”

Dean rolled his eyes and chased after the Chihuahua.

Chasing a dog, especially one that doesn’t want to be caught, is an adventure in and of itself. Add in a smelly swamp and a duffle bag half full of canisters of lighter fluid, salt and a spare shotgun, Dean was having the time of his life. Green briar wrapped around his shin and gouged through the soggy denim of his jeans, the mud sucked at his boots and he prayed the buzzing was mosquitoes, or gnats and not a nest of giant hornets.

He glanced back in time to see Castiel’s new boots sink to mid-calf in what his brain told him was quicksand, but the angel floundered only a moment, went to his hands and knees and wrenched himself up again with a flushed look of consternation. It really wasn’t until that moment that Dean realized Castiel shouldn’t be sweating, but clearly was.

The Chihuahua leapt across a murky, algae thick stream and disappeared into the underbrush. Dean slowed to a stop and turned, brows knit, and motioned to the angel’s brow. “Angels not work out?”

Castiel swiped a hand over his forehead, smearing mud and dirt and a spit of blood from a thorn scratch on his wrist. It glittered in Dean’s vision and all he could think of when he saw it was the bite of the stained rope into his wrists and the empty look in future Castiel’s eyes.

Something was wrong. Dean didn’t know what it was, but he felt it in his gut just as strongly as he felt that Sputnik was still alive, maybe stronger. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Castiel ‘s jaw twitched, it was miniscule, but perfectly visible. He looked away, in the direction the dog had gone and exhaled in a whoosh; “He’s getting away.”

“Cas.”

His chin came up and his eyebrows lifted, voice low and firm, crackling at its edges with warning and unimaginable power. “Dean.”

Dean’s jaw clinched and the words caught in his throat, but the feeling of wrongness didn’t abate.

Barely thirty yards or so beyond the stream the earth beneath their feet began to moisten further, only the sharp jut of large chunked limestone protruding from the slimy green muck allowing them passage.

Dean recognized it, had spent long enough following the highways in his life to know a manmade drainage ditch when he saw one. He had also spent long enough perusing the back side of civilization to recognize the stench of sewer beneath the smell of swamp water and rotting vegetation. The water was flowing toward them from somewhere beyond the thinning thicket of briars and spindly swamp willow. Fifteen minutes later and sure enough, there it was; a retaining wall and fence, behind which was the grassy area adjacent to the gas station. Dean could smell fuel and car exhaust, see tattered foam coffee cups with the station’s logo on them strewn between the rocks and sparse vegetation around him.

There was also a large metal culvert protruding from the wall, approximately three feet in diameter, it had a steady stream of liquid running out—and a tuft of fur clinging to its sharp lip.

Dean peered into the culvert, then at Castiel and rolled his eyes; “Fucking sewers.”

0-0-0

Crawling into a culvert is not something Dean would suggest anybody do, especially in the summer and even more especially when it’s made of corrugated metal. He was sure, after only fifteen feet or so, that his knees would never be the same after this, and if the way Castiel’s breathing changed not long after that, Dean was positive that, not only could the angel sympathize, but something was most assuredly wrong and Castiel wasn’t going to say anything about it. Hell, maybe he didn’t even know something wasn’t right. Yet, Dean had seen him take not one, but six bullets to the chest and a demon killing knife to the heart without even blinking—why was a little physical activity making him sweat, and a little crawl down a sewer pipe causing the hushed grunts of discomfort?

It wasn’t the movement that startled him, not really. On some level he had been expecting that sudden shift in the beam of his flashlight, however he had not been expecting the movement to be so quick. One second, what had looked like a branch in the culvert ahead of them shot off into the darkness with a warbling screech and a violent banging of long slippery limbs against the walls of the pipe.

It was small, and not at all what Dean thought it would be. The Xuphrek in the bucket back at the hotel had been white, this one had been coal black with inky eyes and a body that was definitely dog shaped. His immediate thought was a dog with tentacles but he hadn’t noticed the creature in time to find its head.

Castiel shuffled closer and peered around his hip. He didn’t say anything, but the look on his face when Dean turned the flashlight back on him, was puzzled.

“Hey, Cas? Make yourself useful. Next time warn me there’s something there. I don’t want to wind up in a live action hentai with one of these things.”

Castiel’s face registered confusion for all of two seconds, then his heavenly brain translated what Dean had said and he bobbed his chin in understanding; “They have no interest in mating with humans, Dean. Your virtue is not threatened.”

Dean gave him a warning glare, but at the same time felt a shift in his middle, a reminder and complete awareness that his body was new and he, for the moment, had a virtue to defend. “Yeah,” He exhaled noisily and faced forward again, “Just keep a lookout for those things.”

The pipe rose sharply thirty feet ahead and Dean muttered to himself as he slipped the straps of his bag over his arms, like a reverse backpack and tried to spider crawl up the incline.

It didn’t work.

The second time he slipped, chest crashing against the contents of his bag, knees and thighs bruised and bleeding from contact with the pipe he felt two hands make contact with his ass.

He automatically clenched, legs kicking backward in shock of the touch, and crashed down onto Castiel’s head and shoulders. Wedging himself under the angel’s chest in the too small pipe and scraping his genitals against the rough ribbed metal.

But Castiel didn’t let go, just shifted his grip and gave a firm shove upward.

Dean felt like a bullet, the spiraled texture in the pipe rifling, and he threw his hands up over his head, flashlight tumbling from his grip. He caught himself just as Castiel’s hands found the soles of his boots and he turned his head with a snarl to look down at the angel. “Don’t DO THAT!”

The flashlight tumbled down past them and skittered out of sight but the illumination lasted long enough for Dean to see a new expression settle into place on Castiel’s borrowed face. Annoyance with a little bit of anger.

Dean looked away and told himself it was no big deal, he’d make it up to him somehow, once they found Sputnik and got out of this sewer.

There was no light and the darkness seemed to seethe with movement and a sound like rushing water. The pipe leveled off, echoed with Dean’s breath and the sound of Castiel ascending the pipe. Dean had come to understand, after only two trips into a sewer, that water made interesting sounds in hollow places. It burbled and gurgled and trickled and dripped, then there was that sucking ugly sound of deep water draining downward into a small pipe. A sucking whirlpool noise that got deeper and deeper the bigger the vortex. Dean heard all of it even though he knew in his chest that the sounds were far away, down other pipes. He felt dizzy, disconnected and flying out of control. Sat there hunched at the mouth of the pipe with his back against one wall and his feet against the other breathing and trying to settle the storm in his stomach.

It wasn’t even the smell, not really, you kind of got used to the stench of sewer, rot and burning flesh. It was the awareness, being able to feel things he couldn’t see, things he knew he wouldn’t have been able to feel if Castiel hadn’t stuffed grace into his chest. Dean felt strange, not natural and it conflicted with everything he’d thought he knew about himself. Part of him wanted to tear out his veins to remove it, but another more rational part of his mind told him to calm down he was acting crazy and he had a job to do. He had to find Sputnik.

“Dean, are you alright?”

Castiel was at the top of the pipe ready to exit and there was a faint amount of strain in his voice as he held himself motionless.

Dean nodded, then nodded again and rolled to the side, knees howling in protest and started forward. “You still got that flashlight Rufus gave you?”

“Yes.”

“Wanna turn it—“ And Dean’s hand came down on something sharp. He snarled and jerked his hand back, skittered backward with a curse, hand held to his chest.

The light that blazed from behind him was by no means a flashlight and Dean saw a mottled lumpy mass with beady glistening eyes huddled not five feet from him, tentacles rolled back, mouth open and shining with needle like teeth. It screamed, flailed its tentacles and spewed out a slimy froth of dark liquid, grabbed at a limp off white dog shaped carcass and slithered too fast out of sight down a branching pipe.

Castiel practically tackled him and Dean grunted as the angel clambered over him protectively, arm extended, blue tinted light blazing out from the blade clenched in his fist.

Dean thought instantly of a book he’d read years and years ago, decided he didn’t really mind playing Samwise to Castiel’s Frodo, and felt the amusement melt instantly away when he realized what had just happened.

“Cas… CAS!”

The angel turned from staring down the retreating Xuphrek, his features casting strange shadows from the glow of his blade.

Dean took a deep breath and let it out before he continued; “You wanna tell me why you didn’t see that thing coming?”

It was quick, like the beat of a bird’s wing, but Dean saw the uncertainty—the fear—on Castiel’s face. Saw the cogs turning triple speed in his head and felt those extra hands pulling in close defensively.

“I can’t see anything other than what—“

“Bullshit… You told me you can feel souls. Why didn’t you feel that thing?”

He held Dean’s gaze for all of five heartbeats, then looked away, seeming to diminish somehow.

“Castiel.”

It was Dean’s tone, that commanding bark. Castiel turned to him and pushed out with his grace, “Don’t presume you have any authority over me, Dean Winchester… I owe you nothing. If anything my condition is your fault—“

“My fault?” Dean rolled his lips away from his teeth; “What the hell crawled up your ass!”

Castiel’s face looked vaguely purple in the bluish light but he stayed still only long enough for Dean to register the blush in his borrowed face. Then he tucked his blade back out of existence, like it was sliding back up his sleeve, and simultaneously clicked on the little pen light Rufus had given him, offering a dim yellow glow as he ducked down the pipe in front of him.

Dean cursed and shuffled over with his hand held to his chest, tried not to stare side long down the gaping maws of unexplored culverts and followed.

Castiel was moving purposefully fast, Dean could feel it. There was an apprehensive aura around the angel. Dean knew the feeling, knew what Castiel was doing, but he didn’t believe it. Wouldn’t believe it until Castiel said differently.

“You got something you wanna tell me, Cas?”

“We’re under the gas station. There is a storm drain large enough for the Xuphrek to have pulled Sputnik in.”

“She’s not dead!”

Castiel sighed, a puff of exasperated breath and a shake of his head; “Dean, if she were alive I would—“

“Well, something is wrong with you then, because she’s not dead. I know it.”

“How do you know? I haven’t taught you to search out individual souls. You don’t even understand how to use the grace to manipulate the magnetic coding on a credit card, how do you expect to identify a living being by the frequency of their soul?”

“Hey, that credit card bullshit is hard!”

“That’s just it, Dean. Manipulating a static magnetic code is infinitely less complicated than searching out and identifying a constantly shifting mass of energy based on three or four minute details.”

Dean snorted, “Shows what you know.”

Castiel stopped dead, wriggled around and leveled a stare at Dean that almost—almost, made him back down. “I know souls, Dean. I know and can identify every soul on this planet. Nothing and no one can hide from me unless by measures unknown to man. So, please, understand that when I say Sputnik is not there—”

“Then why are you helping me look for her?”

The angel’s mouth didn’t open and close but Dean felt the loss of words as if he had. Felt the growing emotion as if it were his own. Castiel was angry. Dean hadn’t ever seen him truly angry before, it—it was intimidating, but at the same time the anger wasn’t complete, it was layered with fear and Dean knew something about fear. Knew fear made you unstable, fear made you do things and say things you didn’t mean because you didn’t want to appear weak.

“That’s it, isn’t it…” Dean felt the epiphany deep in his gut; “It’s not that Sputs isn’t there for you to find… it’s that you can’t. Something happened and now you can’t see her.”

Castiel’s grace flickered visibly around him, little tongues of aquamarine light. It cast rainbow hued shadows on the walls of the pipe and the flashlight in his hand burned bright— crackled— and went out.

Castiel made that surprised little ‘huh’ sound again and Dean could hear him rattling the double A’s in the flashlight barrel, the click of the button as he turned it off and back on.

Dean bowed his head with a sigh. “Did you really just blow up the only flashlight we’ve got left?”

“It was more fragile than I realized.”

Dean lashed out and smacked his palm lightly against the angel’s ankle; “Give it to me,” He grumbled as he felt the flashlight passed back to him, twisted to lean his shoulder against one wall of the passage for balance and removed the bulb.

Castiel peered over his shoulder, brows drawn down but couldn’t see a thing; “What are you doing?”

Dean scowled in his general direction, “You just shut up and keep your feelers out for any more of those squids.”

The angel huffed out indignantly but faced forward again.

Dean had dismantled flashlights and changed batteries or bulbs in pitch darkness before, and if it weren’t for the stink of what he was sure was methane and dead dogs, he would have just handed Castiel his lighter and said ‘deal with it’ but he didn’t want to be blown up because of people’s stagnant waste and runoff from a gas station. He fumbled briefly with the bulb but managed to find it without causing further injury to his stinging palm. “Come on, come on—“

“Dean, you shouldn’t—“

“Don’t. Just let me…” He pinched the metal contacts between forefinger and thumb and Pushed into it, felt out the broken ends of the tungsten coils and dipped his head back in surprise when they blazed suddenly super bright. He laughed; “See? I fixed—” And the little bulb politely burst. The element inside smoked for almost two seconds then with a burning smell like hair and hot metal, it fizzled and went out.

Dean wasn’t afraid of the dark, not truly. He did, however, have a fear of small spaces. Forty years in hell and having to dig oneself out of their grave would do that to a person, even Dean Winchester. The fear didn’t set in all at once, first he was angry with himself. He’d got excited and put too much grace into the light, just like Castiel had. Only instead of Castiel’s focused edge, which he’d been able to reign in quickly enough, Dean’s effort had been like a sledge hammer. He muttered obscenities to himself and when Castiel sighed Dean told him to shut up and let him think.

Castiel, however, didn’t shut up. He bowed his head and spoke clearly in strange harsh syllables.

Dean felt the draw of power like someone had attached a piece of fishing line or steel thread to the grace in his chest and started pulling. For a moment it stole his breath but he found it again just as something began to glow from within Castiel’s stolen skin. Dean thought strangely enough of the movie ET, the creepy wrinkly scrotum of an alien with its heart all aglow, then he thought of Anna, seeing her organs light up as her grace had filled her once more.

Dean reached out on instinct, something foreign that he didn’t understand, similar to the way the words Castiel spoke sounded so familiar, like when he’d learned some French watching Canadian VHF TV when he was younger and Dad had parked them in upstate New York. He couldn’t remember the meaning of much now but he remembered the words, the feel of them in his mouth. He reached out and touched the angel’s leg, felt the contact jolt through him like the electric shock of an ATM. Castiel’s grace grabbed him and Dean felt something clicking into place, like the tumblers of a combination lock, twisting and twisting until heat burst in Dean’s chest and throat, burned like the first drag on a cigarette when he’d been seven— Allison had laughed and laughed and little Dean had choked and coughed and felt the smoke in his lungs like acid—

Castiel had him pressed up against the wall of the pipe, Dean didn’t even know he’d moved, iron grip on his upper arms, light blazing in watery patterns from his throat, out of his mouth and nose and in the corners of his eyes. Dean struggled for a moment, shocked, but stilled again when the angel said his name, passed an ethereal palm over his head. “It’s alright. Relax, do not struggle—“

But that’s just what he did.

Castiel seemed amused; “You’re too open, focus it. Bring it in tightly.”

Dean had no idea what he was talking about but something nudged and pulled and prodded at his grace and he understood, felt himself spread out and practically flailing. It took a moment but he reigned it back in and the burn in his chest eased. The pull remained and he only realized in the periphery of his mind that the sensation was Castiel drawing through whatever connection Dean had with Heaven that he temporarily lacked. He’d felt it constantly for weeks, but never this strong.

Dean couldn’t help staring at the glow in Castiel’s chest, he could see his veins and very bones through his skin and it made him feel kind of sick to his stomach. He remembered seeing some guy on TV swallow a light bulb once, remembered seeing it glow through his skin, but this was worse. This was worse because it was so much brighter and dark, sick parts of Dean’s mind wondered what it would be like to peel the angel’s stolen skin back and find what was lit up within him—

It was the first time in weeks that he’d thought about it, thought about the resistance of skin under a knife, and that delicious POP of bones dislocating, but the nausea was instant, overwhelming coupled so with the stench of the sewer around them.

“Lemmego,” His hands came up and scratched at Castiel’s forearms, “Lemmego.”

The angel released him and Dean shoved forward quickly, scurried over and past him like a mouse and tried not to think about where the glow behind him was coming from. Tried not to think of what that grace was doing to Jimmy Novak’s insides, or what he had briefly imagined doing to them himself. He struggled with the sick slimy feeling in his stomach, swallowed it down and hoped it stayed there.

The pipe didn’t get any smaller, but Dean felt it did, and by the time he reached the first junction in the pipe he felt like he was being crushed. His senses acutely aware of the truck stop noises drifting down the drains around him. There were tons-- TONS of dirt and cars and trucks above him, held at bay by a miniscule sheet of metal, corkscrewed into a leaky artery for swill and waste. He twisted to the side and wedged himself against the walls hands on his aching knees, eyes closed, sweat standing out on his face and upper lip, nostrils flared as he fought to draw in breath.

It was a mixture of things. The smell, the knowledge of being underground with no immediate route of escape, the pain in his hand and knees and back and the glowing throb of blood rushing through Castiel’s vessel’s throat. He felt himself shaking and couldn’t stop it.

“Dean?”

He shook his head, fought silently to draw everything back and force himself to calm once more. He felt Castiel’s hand before it even touched him and his breath hitched, teeth appearing like a fence between his lips; “Don’t touch me. I—I need to think.”

Castiel took a deep breath and shuffled around to sit a few feet away, the glow of him dimmed and faded out of his eyes, somehow the concern burned brighter in them without the light at their edges. “Dean, perhaps it would be best if—“

And then he heard it.

Barking.

Faint under the sound of rushing water and the phantom echo of the gas station from the parking lot drains.

Castiel’s words died in his throat and Dean felt the cosmic immensity of him shift. He didn’t dare open his eyes, just focused on breathing slowly and calmly and ignoring the faint odor of rotting flesh that had begun to permeate the stale air around them.

“It’s close, isn’t it,” Dean flexed his fingers in rhythm, tapped out a drum solo and tried to remember the here and now.

But Castiel didn’t speak.

“Cas, where’s the dog?”

“The dog…” Castiel sounded oddly quiet and Dean opened his eyes carefully, saw only a dim ruddy light in the angel’s throat and a strange look in his eyes.

“Yeah. That horny little Chihuahua bastard that tried to… Tried to hump Sputnik.”

“Dog…” Castiel shifted his shoulders and pulled his legs up, crossed them and rested his palms on his knees. He relaxed visibly, the glow in his throat growing and fading in time with his heartbeat and he reached out with his grace, brushed against every soul he could find— Dean’s stood out, he could feel it so strongly… But everything else was faded, indistinct. Murky. He shook himself and stretched out further, felt resistance deep in his core and visibly winced.

“Cas?”

He pushed out, withdrew a little more from his vessel, hovered over the city, watched people entering and exiting the gas station, families in the housing development, farther away Bobby and Rufus in the hotel… no, not in the… yes—no—therenotthere.

“Cas.”

There were animals. Birds, bees, insects, a dog— no, not a dog, fluid, frightened— the xuphrek…

Castiel turned from them, focused on himself and Dean, on the area around them. Souls, where were they? He counted one, two, no— six souls. All moving, all fluid all, no… No. Dogs? Notdogs? Monsters?

For a moment he felt frustrated, then confused and then fearful. Why couldn’t he pinpoint them? Why couldn’t he recognize them?

He flared outward, upward and scanned the whole city, found Bobby and Rufus and the Xuphrek, found clumps of souls he knew had to be people, but they remained behind a fog, indistinguishable from one another. Animals and plants and the very earth felt faded and dim, indistinct and Castiel shuddered, pressed his sixth hands closer together around Jimmy Novak’s soul and felt the core of himself throb, misshapen and shrunken.

Above ground, the air around the city felt charged and clouds began to gather, leaves and flowers curling upward as if to catch rain, wild animals sought shelter and the few remaining dogs in the housing development whined and hid under couches.

Something bubbled in Castiel’s core, unsettled and frightened. He fought against it, willing his senses outward, but they remained blunt and ineffective, no matter how he struggled. Something inside him bristled, knew that he was drawing attention to himself, knew that the other angels would be honing in on his location, but he couldn’t stop. Why wouldn’t his grace respond as it should, as it always had? What had happened to his grace!

“CAS!”

He jerked, felt himself snap back to his vessel like an elastic band.

Dean ‘s voice was rough, lowered in desperation; “Where is the dog, Cas!”

He looked away, felt shame rising like a tide within him, felt his wings tilting in supplication. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know!”

“Perhaps it is the quartz content of the soil, or my continued inability to draw grace directly from heaven—“

“That didn’t stop you before.”

Castiel felt his vessel’s teeth grinding, felt the ache of abused muscles and joints, felt the solidity of this body encasing him and knew it had nothing to do with quartz or his banishment. Something had changed, something had deteriorated— rottedbrokendecayed— and his senses were failing. He remembered the tingle along his edges when he had become fully aware of his vessel, the division of each cell and slow grind as others lost function and died.

Death.

Is this what death really felt like?

Dean sighed and thumped his head back against the edge of the pipe. “Something’s wrong with you. What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s not your concern—“

“Like hell it’s not! If there’s something wrong with you, you’d better damned well tell me. If you can’t hack it you’re putting me in danger here, man… This, this is teamwork, OK? If you’re not at full steam how the fuck are you going watch my back?”

“Your back is to the wall, Dean, how can I watch it if you refuse to move?”

Part of Dean wanted to lash out, but something in his gut felt heavy. Castiel was literal, but in this instance the words seemed to strike deeper. He scuffed his sleeve under his nose and shook his head. He breathed shallowly, trying to avoid the stink of the air around him and motioned further down the pipe; “You’d better go first, you’ve got the light.”

Castiel nodded and the glow in his chest brightened significantly. Dean had to close his eyes as he got closer, but it was as if he could see through his lids. He felt kind of like a bat, his grace bouncing back like echolocation and painting a picture in his head.

Castiel crawled forward and braced his hands on the top of the pipe as he threw one leg over Dean’s. He hesitated, as if uncertain and Dean felt his presence hovering there, straddling his lap and felt a faint urge to reach for him.

Maybe Castiel heard him, maybe he could feel it too, but he stopped and seemed to tremble, the proximity of his body like a weight on Dean’s psyche. Then with a shuddered breath he shifted to the side and crawled forward. “Stay close,” He said over his shoulder.

Dean nodded, cleared his throat and shifted back onto his hands and knees, moving carefully forward, the weight of their weapons pulling at his shoulders.

The barking didn’t seem to get any louder, just echoed down the drains around them like someone was throwing their voice. So Dean chose by the only other sense that hadn’t failed him. The air down the first drain to their right was infinitely more foul than that of the others and Dean took a moment to mumble something about calling this godawful place Moria when Castiel’s hand came down on what had looked like a moldering clump of grass clippings.

The thing lunged out from a drain to Castiel’s right with a screech. An awful noise like a cow being torn limb from limb.

Dean saw enormous tentacles and a gaping mouth filled with sharp teeth the color of rusted nails, illuminated brightly from the glow of Castiel’s grace. Castiel jerked backward in surprise but the thing coiled its tentacles like springs and launched itself at him.

Adrenaline had always seemed to slow things down, but in this instant things happened quickly. So quickly Dean wasn’t even really sure what had happened until it was over. It was like a jump scare in a horror movie, he knew it was coming, but it still made him jerk in surprise and fear.

“CAS!”

The angel shuffled backward in shock, as the creature lurched out of its hiding place and reared up as his blade slid out of his sleeve. Dean gaped at it silently for a moment, thinking that it was almost as if the thing was birthed from the tiny pipe it had been hiding in. It came out in a violent rush of flailing tentacles and splashed water.

The Xuphrek roared and its skin went through a series of fluid color and texture changes. Hair growing and fading from black to white to bright orange with black stripes, skin wrinkling and bunching up into horns and talons and feathers in a rapid display.

It was almost beautiful… yanno, if it hadn’t been a fucking twenty foot hairy octopus monster, big enough to swallow him whole.

Dean went still, tried not to look it in the eye. Bobby had told him that once, about wild animals. Don’t look them in the eye they think it’s a sign of aggression and will attack you. He pulled on Castiel’s shirt tail and muttered, “Just back up slowly.”

Castiel shuffled backward carefully, weapon still drawn.

Maybe it was the fact that he was an angel, not a human, and therefore didn’t understand the world as humans do. Maybe it was because he was an angel, not a human, and therefore believed himself to be in some fucking kind of holy bond with the lesser creatures of the world, or some shit. But, for whatever reason, Castiel didn’t take his eyes off the thing. He met its gaze impudently, gathered his grace and tried to talk to the damned thing.

**“Why are you doing this? Which one of your spawn took Sputnik?”**

The Xuphrek seemed to falter for a moment, eyes shifting shape and size and color and number. It made a low rumbling noise like the growl of a volcano awakening and its tentacles seethed in the dirty water around it.

Castiel gave a convlusive little shiver, eyes widening in shock, and his back straightened, head scraping the top of the pipe. “Oh!”

The Xuphrek seemed to flatten out like a pancake and, to Dean, it seemed to split open like a rotten tomato, writhing and boiling inside, and what came out of it, wet and smelly and wild eyed was the biggest fucking bear Dean had ever had the misfortune to ever see in his life.

Monsters he could tolerate, demons? Meh. Wild animals? Not so much.

The Xu-Bear lunged forward roaring and foaming at the mouth. Its head wedged into the pipe but its shoulders didn’t, its teeth snapped at them furiously and then it retreated—

Dean knew it was coming, but wasn’t prepared, watched horrified as the Xu-Bear ran at the pipe again and launched itself into the mouth of the pipe like some jackass trying to do a flying leap into his bed partner’s crotch.

He yanked Castiel backward with a shout just as the Xu-bear hit the opening and split down its middle in a splatter of blood and water, tentacles shooting out of its wrecked chest, all thick rubbery muscle, like fire hoses unleashed while still connected to the hydrant.

Dean didn’t know much about Xuphrek, what he did know Rufus had told him before he and Castiel had ventured into the swamp, or Castiel had spouted it off while they walked in search of the thing. What he was able to surmise for himself was that this thing was angry. It was also ancient, much larger than a car, and its hide was littered with scars, as if it had gotten into fights in its long life.

Its eyes, where they glinted above its mouth, were bright yellow with slit pupils and as it tore through the skin of the bear, the bulb of its head was crowned in fleshy spikes or knobs like warts. It smelled of rot and decay and had little barbs hidden among its suckers.

Dean pulled against Castiel again, trying to get him out of range of those tentacles, and brandished his gun. He bared his teeth and screamed at it. Low and loud like an animal himself. He didn’t immediately recognize the sound that came out of him as anything HUMAN, and he felt the grace in his chest BOILING. Felt his gun grow hot in his hand, could see his skin light up from within a little, like when he pressed a flashlight to his palm to check for broken bones or debris in wounds, or just to stare at his veins and bones and remind himself that he was solid and alive.

The Xuphrek, seemed to hesitate, and Dean realized he was staring the damned thing in the eyes. It seemed to size him up for half a second before it seemed to swell, taking in air—

And roared back at him, lashing out with the length of its tentacles like a whip. Dean decided, somewhere in the back of his mind, that this thing would be called Zoro, and drew Castiel along with him back down the pipe. “I thought you said car sized, that is a hell of a lot bigger than car sized!” He had to shout to be heard over the noise of the thing.

Castiel’s voice seemed to shake; “I may have underestimated… It appears to have found an alternative food source.”

Dean wrinkled his nose in confusion, then noticed the wilted black thing Cas had put his hand down on was still clutched in one of the monster’s coils. It wasn’t a clump of grass at all, but the decaying carcass of another Xuphrek, half chewed and oozing.

Dean felt mildly nauseated, “Nasty.”

The Xuphrek, still fighting to get its bulk into the pipe, reared backward, tentacles cruling around its mouth in a display of dominance and made a low coughing burbling noise Dean thought sounded like the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, clamped its mouth shut, and spewed twin jets of water from what looked like vents, or tear ducts under its eyes. It visibly deflated and with a wet sucking noise shot into the culvert after them.

Castiel slashed at the monster, taking off two of its tentacles as he scuttled backward, but the thing only fell back for a second, shrieked louder and kept coming, this time with purpose.

It swiped at Castiel’s blade, knocking it from his grip, Dean didn’t see where it went, thought maybe it disappeared under the monster’s writhing mass. The pipe was too small for them to turn around, and the creature too big and too fast to give them that reprieve, poison dripping from its teeth, breath fetid like the bloated ass crack of week old road kill. When it lunged at Castiel again Dean didn’t think, just snarled and shoved his gun and himself forward protectively over the angel’s back. Castiel twisted and grabbed at him with a shout but it was too late, the Xuphrek’s tentacles whipped forward, mouth clamping down and Dean felt for an instant suffocated by ropes of muscle as thick as his thigh, twisting and crushing him and Castiel as if they were loaves of bread.

Needle like teeth clamped down on the barrel of the gun and Dean pulled the trigger, the gun jerking in his hand onetwothreefourfive times in quick succession, and he felt it, felt each bullet like it was part of him.

The shots were loud, but not as loud as they would have been otherwise, but certainly loud enough to make their ears ring and every other sound to bleed away into white noise.

The monster spasmed backward, pulling at them in an attempt to rip them apart, and belched out a thick flood of sticky black ink mixed with blood. It sreamed like a wildcat and tore the bag of weapons violently from Dean’s back, his gun from his hand and ripped his over shirt to shreds.

Castiel caught him around the waist as the monster flailed and retreated an unnaturally fast pace back down the pipe and out of sight, nearly taking Dean with it. They slid and slipped in the mess the Xuphrek had left and Dean landed hard on his back with the angel on top of him, glow blindingly bright, dull ringing and the muffled sound of the Xuphrek’s wounded cries echoing in their heads, breath not coming fast enough.

Dean lay there panting for a handful of seconds, eyes squeezed closed with an arm flung up over his face to shield his eyes from Castiel’s brightness.

The glow diminished and Dean felt Castiel’s hands moving over him, felt the near frantic urgency building in him with every second Dean remained unresponsive. Dean spoke as loudly as he dared, said he was OK, but only belatedly realized that Castiel wasn’t responding, it was as if he couldn’t hear him.

Well, fuck.

He took a deep breath and focused, pushed against Castiel’s grace with his own and shoved the words forward, hands lifting to grab the angel by the front of his ruined shirt; _I’m OK, Cas! I’m OK!_

Castiel seemed to deflate above him, and the glow of his grace dimmed to a soft reddish ember in his chest and throat. His body sagged against Dean’s and he grunted in discomfort because the little bastard was heavy and the pipe beneath him felt like a goddamned cheese grater. But the relief was like a physical wave that crashed through them both; warmth, surprise, and an abrupt dissipation of the mounting panic. His hands found Dean’s head and clamped tight, fingers rigid enough to hold him still but the only pressure between them his joy. His brow bumped against Dean’s as he relaxed and Dean tilted his chin up to meet him.

Dean exhaled, let his muscles relax for a moment while he caught his breath, lifted his hands and pushed the slimy black goo sticking to Castiel’s hair and face back. Let’s not do that again, He blinked up at the angel in relief while his heart slowed its hectic beat. _Are you OK? Did it get you?_

It took a moment, like he was doing a diagnostic check before he answered, but Dean didn’t mind, just tilted his head to the side because their noses kept bumping.

_**I wasn’t hurt.** _

Dean nodded again and it wasn’t until that moment that he realized what was happening, that the taste in his mouth wasn’t just foul air and salty, disgusting Xuphrek ink. That the pressure of Castiel’s hands on his head and his own pulling the angel down by his sticky hair was causing some sort of friction that sparked like electricity down his spine.

He pulled back with a start, lips still parted and vaguely tingling, fingers tangled in the angel’s hair and lifting him away. He felt his stomach lodge up between his lungs and everything ground to a cold halt.

Fuck.

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	42. Bad Dog

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Rufus came back at a quarter after four with a bag of takeout and a box of files he’d gotten from the local police. He paused by the table as he put his burden down and peered into the ice bucket at the Xuphrek. It had twisted and worked itself around and currently had the curled tip of one tentacle in its own mouth chewing or perhaps sucking, and making bubbling noises.

Bobby was on the bed, feet propped up, phone on his lap. He looked like maybe he’d been dozing and rubbed wearily at his eye. “Any sign of ‘em?”

“Nope. Phones?”

“Still no answer.”

Rufus let out a huff of air and hefted the box onto the bed by Bobby’s knees; “You want the good news or the bad news first?”

“There’s good news?”

Rufus grinned, Bobby didn’t like it.

“I’ve got missing pet reports dating back to last April, that’s about the time the first wave of folks moved into the housing development,” He pulled the files out and plopped them into Bobby’s lap. “At first it was just one, maybe two or three a month if they were smaller… Until about two weeks ago,” He motioned to the remainder of the files in the box. “Twenty two animals go missing in a matter of days. The authorities blamed it on coyotes, but one of the deputies pulled me aside and showed me this!” He held up a DVD with another sly grin. “And you’re never gonna believe what he caught on it!”

There was a knock on the door followed by a low, weary voice; “Bobby?”

He blinked up at Rufus uncertainly.

“Bobby, it’s us, can you… uh… We kind of need a hand with this.”

He pushed the files off his lap and darted to the door as quickly as his stiff knees would carry him. He still wasn’t sure if it was really Dean, you never knew until you knew. Rufus took the window and Bobby kept one hand on his pistol, standing off center from the door, just in case.

Rufus peeked out the curtain and his eyes widened. He met Bobby’s eyes and curled his lips back from his teeth in a grimace.

Bobby opened the door, what he saw was two grown men, covered head to toe in mud and a dried black tar with twigs and leaves and cigarette butts stuck to their clothes.

Dean’s head sagged toward his chest a little, the skin visible on his face and cheeks going red, and then Bobby caught the smell. He staggered back a little and curled his moustache up toward his nostrils in an attempt to ward off the stink.

Dean motioned to the side of the building; “Can you hose us off?”

Bobby turned and scowled at Rufus, who just motioned to the Xuphrek and said; “Wanna babysit?”

0-0-0

Dean remembered playing in Bobby’s pond once as a kid, chasing frogs with Sam and coming back covered in mud and smelling awful. They’d tracked the muck into Bobby’s kitchen and left sticky fingerprints on his cabinets while Dean had looked for something to put his frog in. Bobby had come in through the front with the mail and caught them, bellowed; “What the hell are you doing! I just mopped that damned floor!” Then chased them outside with a rolled up news paper, threatening to tan their hides.

Dean remembered standing behind Bobby’s shed, helping Sam out of his soiled shoes and jeans as Bobby muttered and splashed them with the hose.

He recalled it somewhat nostalgically with a hidden grin on his face while Bobby curses at them and turns the hotel’s garden hose on full blast. “Get over there, Castiel. I don’t have time for this,” The water was absolutely frigid and Dean gasps and throws his hands up one to shield his face the other his crotch but Bobby says; “Boy, put your goddamned hands down!” in his most acidic growl and keeps blasting the mud off of their clothes.

Castiel stood there like a wall, turning when he was told to turn, bending over while Bobby put the nozzle close to his scalp, letting Dean scratch his fingers through his hair and get the mud and ink out.

Dean knew in his chest that Castiel’s new boots were ruined, you never really could get the smell out of them once they’d gotten completely soaked, and they jogged in front of Bobby back to the room, leaving wet footprints in their wake, hoping the hotel manager hasn’t seen what they’ve done.

Rufus chuckled as they make it inside; “Find anything useful?”

Dean snuffed wetly, shivering, and wiped water from the end of his nose. He snagged the roll of paper towels off the table in the kitchenette and wadded a fistful of sheets against his bleeding palm; “It’s not a nest. Not anymore.”

“No?”

Castiel attempted to sit on the bed but Bobby gave him a shove toward the bathroom; “Oh, no! You two still stink!”

Dean watched him go into the bathroom and tried to hide the blush on his cheeks. He made a hollow sound in his throat when he noticed Bobby and Rufus staring at him expectantly; “Uh… Oh. Yeah, no nest. There’s one giant one that’s eating the smaller ones… Cas and me found pieces of a couple of them, but it looks like there’s just the big guy.”

Rufus knocked his knuckles against Bobby’s stomach with a grin; “See, I knew something was going on, no way a Xuphrek would let one that young out of its sight,” He held up the DVD again; “And this just proves it.”

Rufus motioned to Dean’s laptop on the night stand and Dean waved at it, tried not to drip on anything but the tile of the kitchenette. “Knock yourself out.”

It was a hassle trying to find the damned file, especially with Dean telling them how to open the media player, which Rufus ignored completely and Bobby tried futilely to implement. When the video began to play there wasn’t anything special. Just the hum of an engine and heavily pixilated scenery. Rufus says it’s from the deputy’s dashboard camera.

The video is at night, there’s the gas station, there’s the housing development and the curves afterward. Dean had walked that area twice since Sputnik disappeared. There was a dense copse of trees to the right and the butt end of the swamp land on—

“Fucking CHRIST!” The officer on the video cries out and cuts the wheel of his cruiser hard to the left just as something gigantic and black slams into the front fender with a dull fleshy thud. It blacks out the camera for a moment, ricochets off the front of the car and disappears over the guardrail into the swamp in a single bound. A cloud of dust erupts from the cruiser’s wheels as it finally comes to a stop. The engine is dead and there’s a repetitive ding-ding-ding noise. When the dust clears Dean saw the windshield was cracked, the hood was crimped inward, and one of the headlights is gone.

The deputy’s partner says, “Holy shit, Randy,” in a low monotone, complete disbelief. Maybe it was shock.

Then the video started again.

Dean watched it four times. “It turned into a bear when it attacked Cas and me… A BIG bear.”

“How big?” Bobby had his arms crossed.

Dean let out a sigh; “The pipes down there are about three feet… It got its head stuck in one.”

Rufus choked on his lunch.

Bobby scratched his forehead, teeth bared; “We’re gonna need backup like crazy on this thing. If it’s that big, and aggressive—“

“We hurt it,” Dean said. “Cas cut off two of its… tentacles, and I put five bullets in it. Then it sucked up all our weapons and slithered off."

Rufus finally got his throat cleared; “Bullets won’t hurt these things—“

Dean lifted the wad of bloody paper towels and poked at the cut on his hand; “Five special bullets.”

Bobby narrowed his eyes; “You mean the ones in the panic room—“

Dean shook his head. “I don’t know how much damage it did, but… It was just like Union.”

Bobby swallowed and glanced at Dean’s hands, noticing the cut for the first time. “Aw, hell. Did you get sewer water in it? I don’t have anymore penicillin, you’re gonna have to see a doctor.”

Dean grimaced, pressing his thumb against the edge of it. It was already reddened and sore, itching. It was kind of fascinating seeing the edges of his skin gap open, even if it left him feeling a little woozy.

Bobby’s voice came from far away, something about peroxide. Rufus said he had some iodine in his truck and… _I graced up bullets and it didn’t hurt._

Dean just stared at it, shifted his feet, tilted his head to the side, and pressed the palm of his uninjured hand over the wound. His grace hummed low like the sound of electricity from afar— _Stop bleeding._

The sound in the room faded back, Bobby and Rufus talking about which hospital Dean should go to and if someone would be able to grab some extra supplies while he was being taken care of.

Dean sighed and lifted his uninjured hand away, paper towels raised to compress the wound again, but—there was no wound. All that was left of the cut was a thin red line in the meat of his palm where thumb met hand. Smooth but still tender, just like new scar tissue always was. His knees shook and he collapsed back into one of the ugly kitchenette chairs staring.

“Whoa, easy, boy. Get it elevated,” Bobby reached for the roll of paper towels and stopped, seeming to just hover there staring at it. He slowly sat the roll of paper towels back onto the table, shifted his weight on his feet and leaned a little closer in disbelief. His voice came out low and serious but at the same time hushed. “How did you do that, Dean?”

He swallowed a dry feeling in his throat; “I… I told it to stop bleeding.”

Rufus approached, eyes wide.

“You told it to stop bleeding and it healed?” Bobby said it slowly, like he was talking to a kid or trying to keep Dean from going into shock.

He nodded, flexed his hand and stared at the mark a little longer. “Feels weird… Like my brain keeps telling me that it’s still there, but it’s not.”

Bobby breathed in deeply and let it out, trying to effect calm, but it wasn’t really working. He wasn’t exactly comfortable with the things Dean could do with that Grace or whatever it was. Just wasn’t natural, but then again, he could overlook it because it was Dean and as long as the kid didn’t start acting WRONG, he would just have to come to terms with it; “You gonna be alright?”

Dean nodded, didn’t feel shocky or sick, not really. Just kind of awed that he’d actually done it. How had he done it?

Castiel came out of the bathroom a few minutes later with a towel around his shoulders, bare ass naked.

Bobby cleared his throat loudly and turned his eyes to a water stain on the ceiling. Rufus snorted, amused, and shook his head.

Dean rubbed his brow tiredly; “Cas, clothes, man. Don’t just… aw hell.”

Castiel pulled on a pair of boxers, scowling at them as he did and sat on the edge of the bed staring at the developing bruises on his knees.

Dean glanced over to make sure he was decent and swallowed past a lump in his throat at the sight of it. He glanced down at his own knees, could feel them already stiffening up just in the short time he’d been sitting and he mumbled a curse as he pushed himself up, limping into the bathroom and shutting the door tightly behind him.

There was a thin film of steam on the mirror and the room smelled of the complementary motel soap. There was a streak of grit in the bottom of the tub, not quite washed away due to the unevenness of the ancient plastic and fiberglass. At least the angel hadn’t left wet towels all over the floor. Just a neat pile in the corner of his soiled clothes. Dean had a half gallon of color safe bleach in the Impala, it wouldn’t be too difficult to salvage some of it.

Dean peeled his clothes off carefully and sat on the edge of the tub to inspect his knees and shins. “Oh, I am gonna feel that tomorrow…” He let out a hiss of a breath and wrinkled his nose in disgust finding flakes and gobs of ink in the creases of his skin. He felt dirtier by the second and climbed into the shower, hot water on full blast.

The water pressure was shitty, the hot water was iffy, but it made it easier to lather the soap and was significantly warmer than that damned hose outside. He shivered, back to the spray and stretched the muscles in his neck, then turned and scrubbed his face savagely with a bar of soap and scratched his nails over his scalp until his skin burned.

For some weird reason his lips were still tingling, maybe it was the water hitting them as he rinsed his face, maybe it was the memory, maybe he was allergic to that damned ink shit and—

_Castiel’s eyes were wide, almost frantic and then relief  spread outward from his middle in a wave, washing the fear away and leaving something different. Something urgent and unnamable. His fingers pressed just a little harder into Dean’s head and he’d leaned forward as if imploding. Brows bumped awkwardly then his lips slotted over Dean’s own, off center with absolutely no finesse, but such—such relief. Such innocence and…_

_Dean shoved him away and rolled to his hands and knees with a gag._

_Castiel blinked at him stupidly; What?_

_Dean hacked and spat a few times and made a low noise of disgust, pushing the words forward as he shouted; “A sewer. We are in a fucking DRAIN, Cas! You—you don’t fucking KISS PEOPLE in a goddamned sewer drain!”_

**_I thought you wanted to._ **

_“NOT IN A FUCKING SEWER!” He dry heaved; “Jesus Christ I’m gonna get the fucking plague!”_

**_Plague isn’t spread by—_ **

_“Just shut up and help me get out of here! Don’t look at me, don’t talk to me, just move!”_

And he hadn’t. He’d been silent the whole struggle back down the pipes and the hike across the swamp. He’d paused a few times, waiting for Dean to catch up, but hadn’t said a damned thing.

Dean’s hand found the texture of scar tissue on his shoulder, a hand print, slowly fading against his skin, no longer prominent and swollen, nearly flat now. Dean leaned his head against the wall of the shower and tried to control his breathing, tried to control the thud of his heart and the volume of his thoughts, pulled everything in tight and close and private. The wall felt cold and his skin felt hot.

Maybe he already had an infection, maybe he should go to the doctor. It would just be his luck to wind up sick after this. He shivered.

In a fucking sewer!

He washed quickly, mechanically. Caught hot water in his mouth and rinsed. Scrubbed every inch of his body, then did it again for the principle of the thing. By that time the water was only luke warm and he was shivering again though he didn’t know if it was from the chill or something else. He grabbed a towel off the shelf above the toilet, shook it out and dried one leg, then the other, tied it around his waist. He caught sight of himself in the mirror, from the corner of his vision, just as he was reaching for the doorknob. The mark on the right side of his chest, the seal burned into his skin. He had half of Castiel’s fucking name BURNED into his chest.

He yanked down another towel and wrapped it around his shoulders like a cape or something, holding it closed over his breastbone.

Rufus and Bobby weren’t in the room when he came out. Just Castiel sitting on the foot of the bed with his towel lying over his head like he was imitating a nun. The bruises on his knees were fading already, healing themselves, would probably be gone in a few minutes. He didn’t look up when Dean stepped into the room and spoke in a low monotone “Bobby is getting another room, he and Rufus intend to bring in another hunter to aid in the search.”

Dean grunted and went to his bag, fished out a pair of underwear and pulled them on under his towel, fighting the creep of red from his face to his chest. “Who they callin’?”

“Bobby has a list.”

“List? He needs a list?”

“He said some of them will refuse if they know you’re here.”

Dean sighed and unwound the towel from his waist, gave it a squeeze as if strangling it. “Yeah.”

Castiel looked at him. It wasn’t new, he did it quite a lot actually, but for some reason this time felt different. Made the little hairs on Dean’s arms and the back of his neck stand up and that TINGLE.

Dean glanced at him while he pawed through his clothes, looked away, and back again. “Okay,” He shook out a t-shirt from the pack and shrugged it on quickly. “We need to get a few things straight.”

Castiel sat up a little straighter, hands on his knees.

Dean held up a finger, ticking off each of the items on his list; “One; You don’t kiss a guy—ANYBODY when you’re in a sewer. It’s disgusting… Two; YOU DON’T KISS PEOPLE WHEN YOU’RE IN A GODDAMNED SEWER!”

“You’ve said that tw—“

“It bears repeating!” He snarled; “Three; If you’re gonna kiss somebody you wait until you’re not in danger!”

“And not in a sewer.”

“Exactly.”

Castiel’s gaze wouldn’t stay on him for long, didn’t seem to exactly MEET him for any period of time.

Dean sighed and threw his balled up towels into the kitchen. He cursed and rubbed tiredly at his eyes. “Come here.”

Castiel blinked owlishly.

Dean bent and snatched up his toiletries case; “Cas, just come here,” And he padded back into the bathroom.

After a moment Castiel followed.

Dean motioned to the disposable toothbrush and little foil packets of single-serve paste the hotel left on the side of the sink; “Brush your teeth.”

It was weird, weirder that it probably should have been, considering. Castiel watched him the whole time, mimicked him and Dean tried not to watch to make sure he did it right. Dean wondered how he had survived the time he'd spent powered down after Lucifer's ascent, then he remembered having to make him take a shower because he didn't understand what the hell BO was.

Castiel asked what the point of mouthwash was if you’ve already cleaned your teeth but Dean didn’t answer, couldn’t help but stare at the knob of Castiel’s throat as he tilted his head back and nearly choke himself trying to keep images of that same throat littered with hickeys out of his mind.

“Dean?”

“What?”

“Give me your hand.”

Dean froze, turned his head and stared at the angel; “Excuse me?”

His nostrils flared; “Your hand. I—I want to… See your hand.”

Dean eyed him askance, felt the pressure of Cas’ grace twisting. He finished putting his things away, then extended his hand.

Castiel gazed at it intently for a full minute, then rubbed his thumb over the mark, brows drawn down. “How did you do it?”

Dean scrubbed his other hand through his hair, could still feel it dripping onto the collar of his shirt even though he’d toweled it dry already. How did Sam stand it so long? “Told it to stop bleeding.”

“Just like you did to Sam,” He leaned close inspecting the scar and Dean could feel the warmth of his breath against his fingertips.

Dean cleared his throat and pulled his hand back, rubbing his fingers together as if they were ticklish. “Yeah, uh…” His toes flexed nervously against the tile. “Uh…” He shifted around the angel and fled toward his bags, “You hungry? I’m hungry,” He wriggled into a pair of jeans and pulled on a pair of socks.

Castiel looked almost disappointed, but with a nod pulled on his own clothes.

0-0-0

Dean had an extra pair of shoes in the trunk of the car. Scuffed tan sneakers he’d found at a Goodwill for a buck twenty-five and they’d still had the sales tag on them. They smelled a little like gun oil and car exhaust now, just like most everything in the trunk did. He leaned his hip against the fender and pulled them on.

He could see Rufus’ truck parked at the other side of the plaza, the curtains were already pulled shut and Bobby was making his way over, face set in an unhappy snarl.

Dean snorted; “Nobody have the time to help?”

“No,” He approached Ellen’s boxy SUV practically fuming and muttered to himself as he climbed behind the wheel. He leaned out the window once the engine was started and caught Dean’s attention, motioned toward the housing development with a nod of his head; “I’m gonna do a drive through, see how many manholes I can find. There’s got to be a better way to get into that sewer than crawling up its ass.”

“Let me know if you find one.”

Castiel came out of the hotel room uncomfortably scuffing the soles of Bobby’s old boots against the pavement. He gazed unhappily around and climbed into the passenger side of the Impala, door shutting with a snap.

Bobby looked between them suspiciously; “Where you two goin’?”

“Food… Haven’t eaten all day.”

Bobby wrinkled his nose at first but seemed to rethink what he was going to say; “You been takin’ your meds?”

Dean rolled his eyes; “Can’t take’em on an empty stomach, Bobby.”

He grunted in acknowledgement; “There’s a burger joint that’a’way,” He pointed to the left, “And some kind of bar-n-grill about ten-fifteen minutes the other way.”

Dean nodded, didn’t say anything and Bobby must have been able to pick up on it because with a put-upon sigh he turned the engine off and crossed his arms; “What?”

His mouth opened and closed; “What if she is gone?”

“Who?” He shook his head; “The dog? Dean—“

“Bobby, if she’s gone I’ve got no warning. I’m gonna be back to just waiting for the next one to hit and…”

Bobby rubbed his face tiredly; “Boy, what do you want me to say? She’s a little dog, this is a BIG monster that EATS dogs… I hope she is alive, for your sake. She’s a little mongrel, but she does good for you. If she’s still alive she’s gotta be in one of two places,” He held up a finger; “She’s either in the county pound,” Another finger; “Or somebody found her.”

Dean blinked. “You mean somebody could have her?”

“Now, I don’t think someone kidnapped her, or pupnapped her or whatever. I mean that she’s a pet, she associates people with food. Animals go where the food is,” He started the car again and drifted to the place beside Rufus’ truck.

Dean stood there for a second staring after him, then looked across the street at the nearest power pole, the faded ‘Lost Dog’ and ‘Lost Cat’ images. He climbed behind the wheel with his brows knitted then turned to Castiel; “Gimmie your phone.”

Castiel had left it in his jacket pocket in the hotel room before they’d gone off into the swamp early that morning and he pawed it out now, handing it over.

Dean dialed Sam’s number while he started the engine and pulled out into the street. “Hey, Sammy, do you have any pictures of Sputnik?”

0-0-0

The public library was small, looked like it was probably built in the sixties, and shaped like a stop sign. Dean signed in as James Paige to use the computers. Castiel stayed outside, ‘watching the car’ but he’d seemed pretty fascinated with a flowering vine growing up the side of the building and across the roof overhanging the front door.

It didn’t take Dean long, five minutes and a buck twenty-five for the pages he’d printed off. When he exited the building there seemed to be twice as many blooms on the vine and Castiel was leaning against the fender twirling a dandelion bloom between forefinger and thumb.

“Hey, put that down. Come on,” Dean could just imagine finding the damned thing in a week dried, wilted, and sticking to his upholstery. Fluffy white dust everywhere. “Cas, come on.”

The angel put the flower into his pocket and climbed back into the car, took the stack of papers when handed to him and inspected them. “Are you going to pin these pictures up? It doesn’t say ‘Lost Dog’ like the others.”

“I’m not making posters.”

“Then what are you doing?”

He drove through the burger joint, passed Castiel the bag and held his soda between his knees while he explained; “Bobby had a point, Sputs’ isn’t gonna go running around wild like that fucking Chihuahua. She’s used to having people around so she’s gonna go to the people.”

“You think she’s been hiding?”

“No, I think she went to find people and people found her. So, now we go to the people.”

Castiel narrowed his eyes and looked around.

“The housing development, Cas. I really doubt she would be this far from where we last saw her.”

Castiel’s chin lifted in understanding and he nodded.

Dean asked for his phone again and dialed the number the librarian had given him for the local animal shelter. A man answered and behind his voice Dean could hear a dog barking and what sounded like ‘The People’s Court’ on TV. Dean said his name was Dean Smith and asked if anybody had brought in a female corgi, that she was a service dog and had gotten out of his car at a gas station the morning before; “She’s a year and a few months old, blonde with a white spot on her forehead. Identifying features? Uh… She still has her tail and she’s got a crooked lower left tooth… Oh, and she has to turn around three times counter clockwise before she jumps onto a couch or bed or goes up or down stairs… No, she’s quirky… Yes, I’ll hold.”

The man on the other end spoke to someone else and came back. Dean’s hopeful expression fell and he rubbed the bridge of his nose; “Yeah, thanks anyway,” He left the number for their hotel room and asked for a call should anybody bring in a female corgi and ended the call. He was quiet for a while, bit into his burger with more spite than he was intending and had to fish out a piece of wax paper from between his teeth.

“What now?” Castiel said around his own food. “Do we investigate the housing development?”

“We’ll make a circle through the place, ask around, check on Bobby and Rufus. If they found a way into the sewer system then tonight we go after the Xuphrek again, if not then…” He leaned back in his seat and took a deep breath, assessed the state of his body. His back ached, his knees were stiff and he didn’t know if he could take crawling around in tiny pipes again, not without losing his shit. “… then we’ll think of something.”

Castiel eyed him and slowly chewed his food; “You need sleep.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

Dean didn’t look at him, finished his burger and crumpled the wrapper. “Look, I just wanna find my dog, OK. I don’t… I’m not gonna be able to deal with this bullshit without some kind of warning before my head explodes,” He rubbed his brow; “She was a pain in the ass, but she pulled her weight.”

Castiel had his head cocked to the side and there was one of those barely there miniscule little fucking SMIRKS on his face.

Dean pointed at him threateningly. “Shut up.”

0-0-0

The housing development reminded Dean vaguely of every single other developmental housing 'neighborhood' he'd ever seen. Uniform houses with uniform lawns and uniform occupants. He half expected to see the cast of 'Leave it to Beaver' or some Stepford Wife carrying a casserole down the pristine sidewalk. From the shiny map printed on the welcome sign Dean surmised that the land developers were planning something big. They’d constructed a partial highway that lead past the existing development and had shorter ‘side roads’ pushing off into the cleared muddy lots across from what the sign called ‘London Loop’. He turned to the blown up map of the development and found main street, the Loop, apparently, it made a teardrop shape with the point being the entrance and exit to the development. The interior of The Loop was an open area with playground equipment and a Neighborhood pool with a concession stand, baseball diamond, and basketball courts. Branching outward from the edges of the loop were Eight streets numbered accordingly from the right to the left, each ending in an unfinished intersection/cul-de-sac, allowing for sprawl. Dean drove in with his heart in his neck.

The place was clean and bright and cheery in a way that made Dean want to scratch his eyes and vomit. There were streetlamps that had a Victorian look to them and hanging from the ones in front of each occupied house was a sign stating in uniform Gothic lettering, that the Morris Family lived there, or the Scott Family, or the Burns Family, so on and so forth. Each yard was manicured and pitched behind a quaint little white fence, each driveway filled with an SUV, hybrid, minivan, or sedan in muted colors.

Dean made a face; “Talk about Suburban Hell…”

There were a few well, but casually dressed teenagers playing basketball on one of the courts that stopped and stared as Dean drove past, and at the first house on First Street a middle aged man in plaid linen shorts and a polo shir, twhose expression pinched distastefully, was rinsing the dust from his Honda with the garden hose.

Dean kind of wanted to turn around and leave but Castiel broke the silence, “That woman has a dog.”

Dean blinked and pulled to a stop in one of the carefully marked spaces bordering the park. There was a woman alright, she appeared to be in her fifties, dressed similarly to the man who’d been washing his Honda, and walking a fat black and tan wiener dog wearing a sequined tutu and bows, down the sidewalk to his right.

Dean felt insulted on the dog’s behalf and called out as he approached, held out his hand and introduced himself as Smith again. The woman’s name was Meredith Floyd, she rubbed her fingers together as if they were greasy after she’d shaken Dean’s hand and gave Castiel a foul look when he crouched beside her dog and brandished one of the photos of Sputnik.

Dean tried to ignore him and spoke to the woman, said he was from out of town and had lost his Response Dog, that she’d gotten out of the car and nobody could find her.

The woman gave him the same story about the coyotes, her eyes went misty and she said that her little Papillion, Germaine, had disappeared a week and a half ago from her back yard. Dean nodded like he knew what she was talking about, but had no idea what a Papillion was. Then the woman produced her phone and showed him a picture of a black and white, big eared little chihuahua looking dog in a blue sequined sailor's outfit and Dean nearly bit through his tongue.

Meredith’s husband appeared on the sidewalk, hose still in hand and asked if everything was OK. She pushed her way past Dean and Castiel and went to him throwing a quick; ‘Buh-bye!’ and a forced little smile over her shoulder.

Dean kind of felt sorry for the stupid chihuahua dog if he'd had to contend with THAT for an owner. Hell, Dean would have run away too in his position. He shook his head, rolled his papers up and tapped his hand with them a few times, looking left and right, trying to decide where to begin. Castiel stood up slowly with a thoughtful tilt to his head; “I don’t believe she understands her breed was created to hunt badgers.”

Dean snorted; “You were talking to the dog? Of course you were… What did she have to say?”

“She kept demanding cookies and ‘nunu’,” He turned to Dean, “What is ‘nunu’?”

He balked; “I got no idea,” He swatted Castiel’s chest lightly with the roll of printouts and went back to his car, unsettled by how close the teenagers had got to her, the last time teenagers had been that close to his car he’d wound up with a busted back glass and a fucking tarp ‘flapping behind like bat wings’.

Five houses more, down First Street, there was a woman sitting in a lawn chair with her feet in a plastic kiddie pool while her three white-blonde children screamed and ran chasing a boxer with a cone on its head. Dean stopped and showed off the picture while Castiel went next door to talk to a woman with a Pomeranian barking and scratching at her living room window.

The mother said she hadn’t seen anything, but that her dog, Buster, had been attacked a few days ago. That her husband had been jogging with him after work when Buster had ‘spooked’ and darted into the bushes, only to come out again a few seconds later screaming and whining with blood all over his head. She called the dog over and pinned him between her legs to hold him still so Dean could see the damage to his face and ear. Dean imagined a large tentacle with barbs hidden among the suckers, lashing out trying to catch the dog, only for it to get away. He asked where Buster and her husband had been and the woman, Clara, pointed further down first street, patted the dog’s flank and let him go. “The road curves to the north about two blocks down and circles toward the back of the development, none of the homes past the Martins are occupied on this street and, well, you’ll be able to see the ones still under construction. Dave was down that way, I don’t know exactly where, he likes to run and Buster’s got a lot of energy,” She took another look at the picture of Sputnik and shook her head; “I’m sorry I couldn’t help, hope you find your dog!” And she went back to supervising her children.

Castiel was already in the car when Dean got behind the wheel, with a devastated slump of his shoulders. “Esther, the woman who owns the Pomeranian, has not seen Sputnik, nor does she know what ‘nunu’ is… Her dog hates that dog,” He pointed to the boxer. “And those children, and that Esther tries to feed him tapioca.”

Dean snorted.

The Martin Family, wasn’t home. Dean couldn’t seen any evidence of a dog, but there was a large calico cat sunning itself in the upstairs window. It stared down at Dean with disdain. Dean snarled back.

The road continued for about four blocks then ended in an unfinished cul-de-sac, just as the picture on the main lawn had said, there was a backhoe and a forklift and stacks of two-by-fours and packaged roofing sitting ready to finish or continue work on the remaining homes.

Dean turned in an unoccupied driveway and used a side street to get onto Second. This one was more heavily populated, so he parked in a vacant driveway, prompted Castiel not to ask about ‘nunu’ again, and to keep a lookout for Bobby and or Rufus.

Dean asked anybody he saw that would give him the time of day, so to speak, but nobody had seen Sputnik. A few even asked if he had seen their pets, and showcased similar fliers and photos. Dean hadn’t, and felt a strange twinge in his chest when he saw the hopelessness in their expressions, felt it himself the longer he continued.

Third and Fourth Streets were densely populated, and most of the pet owners on Fourth Street were missing their animals. Dean knew that this area must have been the closest to the Xuphrek’s exit from the sewers. A thing that big wouldn’t stray to very far from cover unless it had no choice.

Fifth street was empty, and sixth wasn’t even a proper street, just a muddy lot lined on one side by the foundations of houses and the other by mobile homes, occupied by the construction workers and their families. It felt twenty degrees hotter here than it did on the occupied streets and Dean glared at the sun on the horizon, willing it to go down and ease the fucking heat of the day. He thought it had been bad in the sewers, this was just miserable.

A man in torn off jeans was playing catch with a little boy in a cowboy hat at the edge of the lot and when Dean showed off the photo of Sputnik the man shook his head, “No, haven’t been any dogs around here,” He wiped at the sweat on his brow, “You might ask my wife though, she spends more time in the neighborhood than I do.”

“Where could I find her?”

The man, Terrance, directed Dean into the middle of the construction zone. Caitlyn, his wife, was a Foreman, had short black hair and a firm handshake. She laughed when Dean asked if she’d seen the dog and shook her head; “No, we can’t have dogs, Lil’ Terry’s allergic, she’s pretty though. Mind if I keep a copy? I’ll ask my guys before we leave tonight.”

Dean begrudgingly allowed it, scrawled his phone number on the bottom of the page and let Caitlyn fold the photo up and stick it in her pocket.

Sixth street was practically empty, just what looked like a few moving vans schlepping furniture.

Castiel spotted Bobby and Rufus on Seventh Street and Dean pulled to a stop beside Rufus’ truck, more amused than anything that Bobby had stripped off his over shirt and was sucking down the last of a bottle of water, fanning himself with his hat.

Dean nodded in way of greeting; “You guys find a way into the sewers?”

Bobby nodded, “There’s a Manhole cover in the sidewalk about every four blocks. Bad news is, most of them are right in front of houses or under street lights, and the one down there has a bobcat parked over it.”

Dean jerked his thumb back to the construction site; “There’s an open place in the sidewalk on fifth, got a piece of sheet metal over it. I’m thinking that’s where Big and Ugly’s been getting in and out, makes sense because most all the missing animals are from Fourth or Third… Problem is just about the whole construction crew lives on-site, so if we drive up there, they’re gonna see us.”

Rufus wiped sweat from his brow; “So, we walk in after dark and hope to hell that when you shot the damned thing, you killed it, or we’re gonna have one angry monster on our hands.”

0-0-0

Dean didn’t know what he’d been thinking taking out a single. One bed, a small bed at that. He’d promised Bobby that he would try to get some rest but Dean didn’t know if it was going to happen or not. Mainly because Castiel was looking at him. Just standing there in the bathroom door staring as Dean drained the dirty bleach water off their clothes and turned the shower on to rinse them. Once the tub was partially full again, Dean stuck the plug back in place and shut the water off and stood there staring back at the angel, trying to prove a point.

Castiel didn’t get it and continued to stare, like it was a fucking contest.

Dean gave up. “I’m too tired for this crap,” He washed his hands and went out into the main room again, dropping face first across the bed, then wriggling around to take the pressure off his knees.

“Are you going to sleep?”

“Trying to.”

“What should I do?”

“As long as you’re quiet about it, I really don’t care,” Dean rolled away and pulled one pillow under his head and the other over to block out the sound and light.

He felt Castiel’s weight settle on the end of the bed and the TV clicked on, volume so low it was likely only Castiel could hear it.

Dean didn’t dream, didn’t know if he’d really fallen asleep or just dozed off, but he woke up a little later to a strange weight pressed up against his chest and cool night air filtered through the air conditioner. A hand passed over his hair, slowly, but with a familiarity that kind of startled him. More so when he felt the little prickles on Castiel’s chin against his temple. Something instinctual told him he should protest this, it wasn’t right to just lay there and let someone hold him— even worse that it was some guy. But, Dean felt pleasantly boneless, his grace was extended, seemed wrapped up in the angel’s and it was comparable to a back rub after hours of driving. Dean just let himself remain limp and those long fingers push his hair this way and that, more curious than Ellen’s ever had been.

Then Castiel’s phone rang and Dean couldn’t fake sleep any more.

They took Ellen’s SUV, mainly because it was newer and would blend in with Suburbia seamlessly.

Bobby pulled into one of the houses on Fourth and motioned for Dean and Castiel to follow him. He’d taken some initiative and upon opening the hatch shoved bulky rubber boots and coats into their hands. “I’m not hosing you two down a second time.”

Castiel’s feet actually fit in these boots and he stood there wiggling his toes in them looking expectantly at Dean. When he realized Dean wasn’t going to press his thumbs into the toes of them he stopped and wandered away after Rufus dejectedly.

The hard part wasn’t sneaking into the area, the hard part was shifting a two inch thick, seven by five foot piece of solid steel aside long enough for them to climb down into the maze of tunnels under the housing development. Dean and Bobby tried lifting it together, but it was nearly impossible to get their fingers under it.

Castiel huffed out a breath, shoved the bucket holding the baby Xuphrek into Dean’s hands then politely lifted the plate up as if it weighed nothing at all. “We’re wasting time.”

Bobby went first, shined his light back and forth once he’d found the bottom and gave a thumbs-up sign for Dean and Rufus to descend.

Castiel lowered the plate down again over his head as he climbed down and Rufus handed out flare guns and extra flares with a warning of; ‘Shoot first ask questions later’.

The main sewer was much larger than the one Dean and Castiel had spent all morning crawling through. More of concrete hallways with slanting floors and the odd pipe running out from the houses. Dean was reminded of the sewers he’d seen in larger cities and wondered what the developers had in mind for the surrounding swamp land.

Rufus took a moment to address the Xuphrek in the bucket, reached into his pocket and collected what looked like a tuft of animal hair that he dropped toward the thing’s gummy mouth.

The Xuphrek stared up at him uncertainly for a moment, blinked and—And where the hair had touched its skin the Xuphrek began to change. Slowly, but then with growing speed until its body wouldn’t fit into the bucket anymore and it drew itself out.

Dean gave Rufus a long stare; “I hate you.”

The Xu-Cat stretched its legs and coiled around Rufus’ ankles before turning its pink nose to the air and padding off.

Rufus shrugged innocently, “Think of it like a canary. Big and Bad comes our way that thing’s gonna run. Did you see the scars on its head?”

“No.”

“It got swiped once, it’s not gonna let itself get that close again.”

Dean had known, somewhere, at least, that the drain he and Castiel climbed into wasn’t supposed to be flushing actual septic waste. So, finding the hole in the wall and the broken sewage pipes answered at least where the sewage had come from. And the dark stains around it told him that Big Bad and Ugly was in the area, or had been since he’d shot it.

Castiel said he might be able to sense the whereabouts of Dean’s gun if the grace he had pushed through it had lingered in the metal.

Dean asked if Castiel could find his sword that way and Castiel said he already had, that it was in one of the pipes they had traversed earlier. “I don’t need to go there physically to retrieve it, my blade is part of my grace, I can reach it when necessary,” And he politely clocked out. Left his vessel standing there staring off with unfocused eyes.

Rufus whistled low and waved a hand in front of his face then turned to Bobby; “What’s he doing?”

“Beats me,” Bobby scanned the tunnels around them for movement, but all he could see was the Xu-Cat lingering just behind Rufus’ feet.

Dean felt it when Castiel came back to himself, just a FULLER feeling to the air and he let the tension bleed from his shoulders.

“Your weapons are within a few hundred yards of us, I can’t be more accurate, I’m sorry,” He looked away uncomfortably and shifted on his feet. “There is also another opening in this corridor that leads up to ground level. I think the Xuphrek may be using it as a second means of entering and exiting the sewers… It’s near the pool.”

It was a long walk. The sewer flowed in a branching pattern , culminating in a main corridor that Dean was pretty sure went started under the park in the middle of London Loop and headed to the back of the development and connected, or would connect with the planned sewer system of whatever they were building down “Freedom Drive.”

By Dean’s guess, they’d made it half way to the park before something happened. And then it was only the smell changed. He’d noticed that this sewer didn’t smell as bad as the other one, but then, slowly, he’d begun to understand that it was because they were under houses that had never been lived in. There was no reason for a brand new, unused sewer to stink. The Xu-Cat made a low growling noise in its throat and Dean managed to step away just before it went SPLAT!

Rufus grumbled and ushered it back into the bucket then shoved it into Dean’s arms.

“I’m allergic to cats!” He said quickly, trying to foist the bucket back onto Rufus.

“It’s not a damned cat! There’s no way it could even BE a cat, it just makes itself look like one.”

Dean still wouldn’t take the bucket, for the principle of it, this thing very well could have eaten his dog. Cas took the bucket, shook his head in disappointment and struck out ahead of them.

Thirty feet more and the Xuphrek made a screeching noise in the bucket and flung itself out again, wrapped around Castiel’s arm and started climbing quickly toward his face.

Castiel, for the most part didn’t seem alarmed until the tentacles wrapped around his neck and Dean skidded to a stop beside him and started prying at the rubbery ropes of muscle cursing and shouting for help; “It’s gonna strangle him!”

And something growled in the darkness ahead of them.

Bobby’s head snapped up and he trained his flashlight dead ahead. He muttered; “Bear,” and tilted his light out of the thing’s face.

Dean looked up just as Bobby’s light slid away and his hand went immediately to the flare gun at his waist.

Rufus put out a hand and met Bobby’s eyes, jerked his chin curiously toward the monster.

Bobby slowly moved his light again and sure enough, there it was… Its mouth opened and a low growl came out, but it didn’t move. Just laid there half propped up against the wall, half bear, half tentacle monster, in a puddle of ink and blood and water.

Dean stared at it and saw blood dripping from its mouth and nose, eyes glazed, breath wheezing and bubbling from the holes in its chest and stomach.

Bobby shook his head in disbelief; “It’s huge! You and Castiel went up against that thing alone?”

The Xuphrek on Castiel’s shoulder was trembling, eyes wide and fearful, suckers clinging to Dean’s hands. Castiel was silent, staring at the monster with a pained look on his face and Dean—Dean couldn’t look away, he’d locked eyes with the beast and he couldn’t blink.

It was like a pressure in his chest, pushing against everything that he was and it wasn’t until the sensation crested and crashed down on him that Dean realized he could feel something foreign and angry and full of hate and rage and loneliness.

Dean covered his nose with his sleeve and felt something like remorse take root in his heart. The Xuphrek was ancient, it hadn’t asked for humanity to push it from its home, it hadn’t asked to be hunted, didn’t understand that what it had done to survive had hurt people. It wasn’t a person or human monster, it was just an animal, some poor weird creature that was too big and too hungry and too close to suburbia.

Rufus shivered; "Just Put the thing out of its misery, it’s suffered enough.”

All it took was two flares and the beast went up like kindling, lurched and with a loud POP went still. Everything would have been fine, but the sound of the flares scared the Xuphrek on Castiel’s shoulder and with a shriek it flung itself toward Rufus and wrapped around him warbling helplessly.

Bobby rolled his lip up at it and shook his head; “I knew it… I frickin’ knew you weren’t gonna be able to kill that damned thing… You won’t bat an eye at a human monster, but if it’s an animal…” He rolled his eyes skyward as if asking for patience and shook his head.

The dead Monster’s body curled and shriveled, crackled with flame but very little smoke, burned down to barely anything and what was left would be washed away during the first rain storm without anybody knowing.

It took the better part of half an hour to find where they’d entered the sewer. Castiel went up first and made sure the coast was clear, held the metal plate out of the way as they made their escape. They paused by the SUV and Castiel vanished, returned a few moments later with his sword and Dean’s gun held butt first in Dean’s direction. It was dry and clean and Dean didn’t ask any questions.

Rufus was trying to peel the Xuphrek off his arm and scare the thing down a storm drain, but it wouldn’t go, just kept wrapping its suckers around his hand or clinging to his boots. Bobby put an end to it, said he wasn’t staying in a hotel room with a damned tentacle monster and Rufus narrowed his eyes, sprinkled more hair onto the thing, pleased when it had assumed a more ‘normal’ shape. “Can you stand a dog?”

Bobby pouted the whole ride back to the motel. “Should have just killed it when I had the chance.”

Dean showered again, just for the sake of showering. There hadn’t been much stinky or wet, and he sure as hell hadn’t gotten anything on his clothes, but it was just… He needed the time to think. To wonder what had happened to Sputnik and if she really had been eaten.

Castiel was sitting on the end of the bed in a t-shirt and his boxers, trying to miracle his boots back into wearable condition. So far they were dry, but held a weird smell.

Dean rubbed his hair with his towel and let out a sigh; “Don’t worry about it, we’ll get you some odor eaters and they’ll be fine.”

Castiel nodded and sat the boots aside. “Dean?”

He grunted, shuffled into the kitchenette and shook the grains of rice from his phone.

“I want to apologize.”

“For what?”

“For what happened in the sewer this afternoon.”

Dean lifted his head and stared.

“It was wrong of me and I will not do it again.”

Dean ground his teeth, flexed his toes, drummed his fingers on the counter top and with a deep breath for courage, stalked across the room to stand in front of the angel.

Castiel didn’t look up, just sat there staring into the corner with his shoulders square and a serious look on his face.

Dean did it before he could think about it too much, just reached out and grabbed him, planted a quick kiss on the corner of his lips then pulled away; “It was a sewer, Cas… You—you don’t kiss people in a sewer,” And he went back to work on his phone.

Castiel stared at him and after a moment took the phone away and held it pressed between his palms. There wasn’t a glow, wasn’t any indication that he’d done anything to it, but Dean knew he had just as surely as he knew that after today—after this moment, things weren’t going to be the same between them.

Castiel didn’t let go of the phone right away, held it for a second too long and if the damned thing hadn’t begun chirping and dinging and letting Dean know that he had a few texts and missed calls and wasn’t he so happy that he’d got emails—Dean may have planted another one on him, but as it was Dean was already shaking inside with nerves and barely controlled fears and the phone just gave him an excuse to pull away for a while and regroup.

He sat on the edge of the bed while Castiel went into the bathroom and listened to his voicemails.

Two from Sam, the first saying to call him, the second hissed; “Dean, call me back as soon as you get this!”

There were a few text messages, one from Ellen and four from Jo, all amused about something and then—

The recording was gritty, a teenaged girl was laughing in the background and a couple dogs were barking; “Hello? Uh—this is Bill Addison—uh—I work for Caitlyn Meyers? Yeah, uh—I-I think I have your dog.”

0-0-0

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0-0-0


	43. Shame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Jessi and Paul. You guys rock!
> 
> And to all you Sputnik lovers, you're awesome!

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Dean slept like a log. Woke up with his limbs tangled in Castiel’s and his phone ringing.

Sam wasn’t happy that Dean hadn’t called him back, muttered something about a gigantic flower arrangement that had shown up with a long sobby letter from Becky and that Jo and Ellen thought it was hilarious.

Sam grumbled that he wanted nothing else than to get out of the city as soon as humanly possible. “Last thing I need is her showing up here—“

Dean snorted; “Aw, is that any way to talk about your girlfriend!”

Sam called him an asshole and Dean laughed quietly, found his fingers carding through Castiel’s hair, the angel’s breath puffing out warm against the underside of his chin. “’found Sputnik.”

Sam’s breath seemed to catch and he spoke carefully, fearful of what Dean may have to say; “Where?”

“Shacked up with some family. Their daughter found her… I’m gonna meet them after noon and pick her up.”

Sam let out a little breath in relief; “That’s great, man. I’m glad she’s OK.”

Dean snorted; “Bobby said I should get her ‘chipped so this doesn’t happen again.”

“What, you mean like LoJack?”

Dean grunted and Castiel moaned softly in his sleep.

“Uh—What was that?”

Dean felt his muscles clamp up; “What was what?”

“That noise.”

“What noise, you’re hearing shit.”

Sam said ‘uh-huh’ in a low disbelieving tone. Dean told him to shut up.

By the time Dean got Cas vertical and dressed Bobby and Rufus had already left. It wasn’t a surprise, Bobby had told him there was a lot of work to be done in Sioux Falls before Sam could leave the hospital. That the doctors wouldn’t even consider releasing him until he had a place to stay and was scheduled with follow-up appointments in his ‘home town’. Dean didn’t know how he was going to repay Bobby for all he’d done, didn’t know how things were going to work with Sam in a wheelchair and only minimally functional.

Dean had only begun to realize what a danger it was having Sputnik around, and the compromises he had to make because of his own injury, what was he going to do about Sam’s?

We can’t hunt together anymore. It’s too much, too memorable. We’ll get recognized and that’ll be the end of it. Jail time and demons and back to the pit.

Dean’s appetite fluttered out the window and he wound up sitting at the table in the motel kitchenette staring down at the instant oatmeal he’d just pulled from the microwave. Disgusting stuff. He pushed the bowl in Castiel’s direction and rubbed tiredly at his face, checked his phone again for the go-ahead text from Addison but it hadn’t come yet. The wait was killing him.

Castiel ate the oatmeal then sat there silently staring at Dean’s hands. They were good hands, even with the tiny little scars littering them. The white ones on his knuckles and wrists from clawing out of his grave, the little nicks on his fingertips from working on engines and sharpening knives, the pink scar across his palm and the creases of his skin. Castiel thought they said a lot about who Dean was. Dean’s hands were his greatest tool and greatest weapon. There was also a loneliness in them, a sense of selflessness and lack of worth. Dean saw his hands and saw only what pain they had caused, not what joy they could share. Castiel wanted to touch them, wanted to press them between all of his own and make Dean see what he did when he looked at them.

Dean glanced up, slightly uncomfortable under the other’s stare. Castiel’s hair was a mess, standing up in dark spikes and feathery waves. There was a faraway look on his face, penitent and somehow sad, as if the space between them were a million miles, not barely two feet. Dean twisted his fingers together nervously and noticed how the angel followed them, seemed fascinated. Dean tried to hide them under the table, then rubbed them on his shirt and finally tried to scrub a weird tingle from his face, why the hell was he grinning? Stop it Dean, you look like an idiot!

Castiel liked those little grins, the little smiles, the light in Dean’s eyes. He didn’t understand why, but they made something in his core, near the scar he called his heart, feel warm and tight and trembling with energy. The longer he stared at Dean the more Dean tried to hide the grin, the pinker his face and the tips of his ears became. “Why do you change color like that?”

Dean rubbed his face, tried not to meet the angel’s eyes; “I don’t know but I wish I didn’t,” He pushed back from the table and picked up his discarded jeans, shook them out to make sure no spiders had climbed in them to hide in the night, and pulled them back on.

“Why? Your complexion favors the color. Its attractive.”

And there the pink went, right up the back of his neck. “Dude, you don’t just say things like that.”

“Why?”

He rubbed at it self-consciously; “Cause it’s embarrassing.”

“But it’s true.”

  
“Cas, man. Don’t,” He could feel the heat growing stronger. “You’re making it worse.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You—you’re looking at me.”

“I’ve looked at you before.”

“Yeah, but… but not like you’ve seen me naked.”

“I’ve seen your soul lain bare and you’re worried about being witnessed physically nude?”

Dean made a spluttering noise and stumbled into the bed, his face was past pink now into something red and painful looking. Castiel, for some strange reason, found this intensely satisfying.

Thankfully, for Dean at least, his phone chirped. Thank Christ!

The directions were long, but in all actuality very simple.

Bill Addison lived in an older house about fifteen minutes past the gas station, in the complete opposite direction as the housing development. Dean kept glancing at the text thinking, perhaps, he’d been driving on this rutted dirt road for too long. He was beginning to think have to turn around when the hedge alongside the road suddenly gave way to old, slightly rusty chain link and Dean found himself level, through the open window, with the embankment and about six dogs.

There was a black German Shepard, a basset hound, two beagles and a black, brown, and white corgi. The instant the car came into view all six dogs were barking and running along the fence parallel to Dean.

To say the least, it was startling to have six dogs suddenly barking in his ear, and Dean hit the brake a little too hard. Castiel rocked forward in his seat, hands thrown up against the dash to keep from smacking his face, and the dogs kept barking, tails wagging excitedly.

There was a truck parked outside the fence, under which a large orange cat and a couple kittens were lounging in the dust and Dean took a moment just to look everything over.

Addison’s house was fairly well kept considering its age, the siding didn’t exactly match, and there was a garbage can overflowing with soda and beer cans beside the porch, but it seemed warm and homey in a way Dean had trouble understanding.

Bill came out the front door and waved, whistled loudly and said; “Come here you dogs!” and they all ran up to jump at him, licking and whining and yapping.

Dean parked behind the truck and climbed out, shielding his eyes from the sun and hopefully obscuring his features enough that the security camera attached to the eaves of the house didn’t fully record his face. Castiel made no such concession, and instead followed behind Dean quietly, squinting around at the house and yard and animals behind the fence. They whined happily and leaned against the fence to sniff and lick his hand when Castiel presented it, seeming to innately sense his difference.

Bill was older, late forties, early fifties, Dean couldn’t exactly tell because it looked like Bill’s hair had gone prematurely gray. He was Dean’s height, but bulky, looked more like a biker than a construction worker with a leather vest over a tattered red t-shirt and faded jeans. However, he was soft spoken and the way the dogs flocked around him vying for attention put Dean at ease that this man and his family had taken care of Sputnik with the same kindness.

Bill’s daughter was named Tabitha, she was tall and thin and pretty in that plain, unsophisticated way some eighteen year-old girls are, just on the cusp of adulthood. She had bright red hair and freckles and she came out of the house carrying Sputnik like an infant.

Dean felt muscles he hadn’t known were tense relax when Sputnik’s eyes landed on him and she started wriggling in earnest, whining and licking her lips excitedly. Tabitha laughed and had to wrap both arms around the dog to keep her still. The other dogs flocked around Tabitha’s legs and the brown and black corgi jumped and danced barking loudly in the girl’s path.

Tabitha stepped outside the gate and sat the dog down and she was off like a fighter jet, running at Dean’s shins as if she intended to knock him over.

“Sputnik!” Dean dropped into a crouch and wound up on his butt trying valiantly to keep the dog from licking his face, but she was squirmy and excited and shivering all over with high pitched whining noises and if she swiped his cheek a few times nobody cared.

“Look at you!” Dean said, fingers catching in her ruff. There were little purple bows clinging to the soft curling fur behind her ears and she smelled—She actually smelled OK, not too much like dog. Dean was surprised by the improvement.

Tabitha was back behind the fence now standing at her father’s elbow with her arms crossed on top of the fence; “She was all dirty and covered in chiggers when I found her. Took her to the dog groomer in town, they gave her a bath and a flea dip, she cleaned up real nice.”

Dean didn’t know how he felt about the bows or the lavender polish on Sputnik’s nails but he could overlook it just for the sake of having her back.

A whining noise close to Dean’s head stole his attention and he looked over into the eyes of the other corgi.

Bill laughed and forced a serious expression onto his face; “Aw, say goodbye, Jackson. She’s gotta go home now.”

The dog, Jackson, pawed at the fence sadly and Sputnik scurried out of Dean’s grip to meet the other dog at the fence.

Dean blinked, a little insulted that Sputnik would rather sniff and lick some strange dog than—He scowled. “You little hussy! I’ve been worried sick and you’ve been shacked up with him this whole time?”

Tabitha cackled and Bill leaned over the fence to give Dean a hand up since Castiel was occupied with the other dogs, seemed to be maintaining a group conversation with them. Dean shook his head and, seeming to shake himself free of his shock, fished in his pocket and handed Tabitha what he had in loose bills.

The girl blinked in surprise and tried to hand it back, startled when she realized that those were zeroes after the ones; “Oh, I—I can’t. She was no trouble, really!”

Dean held his hands up and shook his head; “You don’t get it… She—“ He cleared his throat and started again; “She’s not just a pet. I have this… I have epilepsy, and she knows when I’m about to clock out, warns me so I don’t hurt myself. When I realized she’d got out of the car I thought the worst. Then I heard about the whole thing with the… with the coyotes,” He raked a hand through his hair nervously, “I thought she was dead. But you found her and kept her safe… So, take it, put it toward college or something.”

Her thin fingers curled and Dean thought she might be about to cry. Bill nudged her with his elbow and she stuttered out a thank you and dabbed at her eyes, trying not to smear her makeup.

Castiel stood, conversation with the dogs finished, and they lumbered off to sniff and whine at Sputnik through the fence.

They didn’t linger. Dean’s stomach was bubbling emptily and he feared standing there any longer would give Tabitha enough time to count that money and make things even more awkward. He shook Bill’s hand again, let Tabitha throw an arm over his shoulders from across the fence and waved as he made his way back to the car, whistled low and called; “Sputs’, come on!”

She tilted her chin up, gave Jackson and the other dogs one last look and a hushed ‘whuff’ of a goodbye. When Dean opened the door for her, she turned three quick counterclockwise circles and jumped in, snarling excitedly when she saw he’d laid out a new tennis ball and her towel in the back seat. She leaned her paws into the window as they pulled away, towel between her teeth and put her nose to the wind with a happy sigh.

0-0-0

Dean detoured into town and found the dog groomer. Jogged inside and came out with two large bottles of dog shampoo, and politely didn’t acknowledge the little bows that came on a card taped to each bottle. When Castiel pulled one out of the bag and fingered the edges of them Dean ignored him and swung through the burger joint for lunch. He leaned over the seat, burger clamped between his teeth and dumped a box of chicken nuggets into Sputnik’s bowl in the foot well. Then pretended not to see the knowing grin on Castiel’s stupid smug face.

He wouldn’t say it, Dean had always believed that actions spoke louder than words anyway and besides, Sputnik couldn’t understand him even if he did say it. A new tennis ball and the expensive kibble and a couple orders of chicken nuggets let her know better than any stupid words ever could so what did it matter.

Shut up Castiel.

Dean drove until the gas tank was almost empty, shook out his hand and hit the ATM. It was coming easier now, he hadn’t quite mastered the trick with the card, but he could stick his finger in the slot and get his cash that way no problem. He found a diner shaped like a railroad car in Kentucky and ignored the unfriendly stares the truckers gave them from the counter.

Sputnik sat primly by his heel, staring at everyone as if daring them to insult her bows or sparkly purple polish and Dean ate until his stomach felt distended then watched Castiel take down a piece of coconut cake and a chocolate malt.

One of the truckers at the far end of the bar stood with a loud scrape of his stool against the lenolium, flipped his news paper closed and said he wasn’t gonna sit around and watch this shit. Dean looked up, trying to find the ‘bullshit’ but noticed the TV above the counter instead, the weather report saying something about severe storm warnings for the area, storms capable of producing golfball sized hail and winds in excess of fifty-five miles an hour. Dean’s first instinct was demonic activity, but then the weatherman pulled the map back and showed the storms progression from across the country, showed how the Jetstream had dipped and all the moisture from the gulf was feeding it.

Normal storms then, OK, Dean could deal with that. They’d head north out of the danger zone and see what was happening in Ohio. He paid with cash, got two pieces of Dutch Apple for the road, and a cup of coffee to go. He wasn’t really supposed to have it, but one cup wouldn’t hurt.

The waitress didn’t tell them to have a nice day, but dropped two pieces of pie into Styrofoam boxes and sloshed some stale coffee into a to-go cup.

Castiel had Sputnik’s lead in hand and was swinging on his jacket when Dean returned to the table, had left a few ones tucked under his empty malt glass like he’d seen Dean do before, and they left.

The sky was heavy and dark and Dean could see the gray haze of rain to the west. It was raining heavily and the wind was blowing by the time he’d found the interstate. Things moved slowly because of the storm and Dean had to turn on the heater to keep the windows from fogging up. Castiel peered out the window and talked about the colliding fronts, the billions of gallons of water hovering over their heads, seething amid the static and atmospheric electricity. Found some weird peace in it that made his grace go warm and soft against Dean’s.

Dean tried not to be freaked out about the whole BILLIONS OF GALLONS OF WATER FLOATING AROUND OVER HIS HEAD bit. The rest, well, it—it was nice to just drive and listen to the weather alerts buzz low on the radio while Castiel talked about the rain. Sputnik snored from the back seat and despite the chaos going on in the atmosphere, Dean felt calm, like maybe everything would work itself out and he and Sam would be OK.

It was raining in Ohio, just as it had been everywhere else. Lightning flashed through the clouds every so often. Dean stopped and filled up the tank again, said Hello to an ATM and found it more and more difficult to close his wallet, decided maybe he needed to stop himself before he wound up sitting crooked.

Castiel came in with Sputnik and traded her lead to Dean for a trip to the restroom. Dean blinked after him, confused by the look on the angel’s face, and bought a few newspapers.

Dean pulled the car away from the pumps and spilled some kibble into Sputnik’s bowl for her, then tapped his fingers against the steering wheel and waited for Castiel to reappear. It took fifteen minutes and when he came back out there was a peculiar scrunch pulling his features together.

“You OK?”

Cas looked at him, then nodded; “I’m fine.”

“Need some Rolaids?”

“Will it help?”

Dean snorted and fished the roll out of the glove box.

Castiel crunched up a few of them and wrinkled his nose at the texture, worked his tongue at the backs of his teeth in disgust but Dean just laughed again.

Other than for Gas, Dean didn’t stop again until they were well into Indiana and the rain was still pounding down. He found himself faced with two choices, ones he’d never truly considered before. One, there was a motel beside a truck stop with spluttering neon and a blinking ‘vacancy’ sign, or, according to the sign by the highway, there was a ‘Micro Lodge’ nine miles to the north-west.

Dean stared at the Motel, lost in a haze of rain, the cars packed into the lot and the orange bug lights outside every room. Then he turned to the two-lane, stretching off to his right, glittering under the slightly green glow of streetlamps.

He’d been taught to take the choice with the quickest exit, that speed trumped comfort any day of the week. He’d learned to believe mattresses were supposed to be lumpy or saggy and the stains on the upholstery and ceiling added character. That it wasn’t suitable unless there were cracks in the plaster and faint mildew smells coming from the bathroom.

Dean glanced over and saw Castiel with his chin propped on his fist, leaning against the door with a dreamy, tired look on his face and felt a stir in his chest. Things weren’t going to be the same anymore. Not just because of the kiss, but because he didn’t know if he could deny how right it had felt. He didn’t know if he could ignore that knot in his heart that told him, with everything he was, that this was CAS! He didn’t know how, or why, but this was his Cas sitting there yawning at the rain and fogging up the windows with his breath. Solid and real and THERE just at the reach of his arm.

Dean’s mouth was dry and with a deep breath he turned onto the two lane and headed north west toward the Micro Lodge.

There was no pay-by-the-week option, not like at motels, who gave you a discount if you stayed seven days, or only a few hours.

There was a dining room with a hot bar and a sign saying Breakfast would be served at seven AM. There was a pool, an indoor pool at that with a life guard on duty from nine AM to six PM.

Dean felt like a slug when he slunk in from the rain, felt like he didn’t belong with the fresh, unstained décor. It was like an alien world. The young woman behind the desk had her hair piled into a sophisticated up do with chopsticks and had on a silk shirt with the hotel’s name embroidered on the breast. She made eye contact, seemed like she wanted to remember his name, not to tell the cops, but because she wanted to be polite.

Dean was a little creeped out, took the keycards and scurried back to the car.

Castiel was slumped against the window snoring lightly, and Sputnik lifted her head lazily when he climbed back behind the wheel, blinked and lowered her head again with a sigh.

The room was on the second floor, at the back of the building overlooking a basketball court and a smoker’s shed. No smoking in the rooms, please and thank you.

Dean was uncomfortable for all of fifteen minutes, the time it took to gather his and Castiel’s bags, wake the angel, get Sputnik tucked against his chest to keep her out of the water, and make it up to their room.

The lights clicked on and Dean felt like he was looking at one of those Home Décor magazines like in emergency room waiting areas. The room was light and airy and smelled of something fruity but gentle, not like they were trying to cover up smells, more that they were trying to introduce one. Dean felt almost too shocked to touch anything, He put his bag down and shook out his coat, slipped it onto a hanger in the little closet. He was afraid to sit on the bed lest he stain the fragile mint color of the comforter. He sat, eventually, because he didn’t know what else to do, and that was the end of his trepidation.

“Oh, my God…” He flattened himself back across the mattress and stared up at the ceiling with his mouth hanging open. His fingers pressed into the coverlet on either side of his body, felt the springy pillow of the mattress top and the painful burning ache in his back as all his vertebrae began to stretch out. “I want one. I don’t have anywhere to put it, but I want one.”

Castiel put his own things down and tossed himself across the mattress at Dean’s side, seemed to melt into it with a hum. “Good foundation.”

Dean took a shower before bed, leaned against the wall and fought arousal through all seven settings on the bulbous shower head. The room was so warm steam billowed out like a cloud when he opened the bathroom door.

Castiel had discovered the TV and was watching reruns of some talk show. There were five women sitting around a table arguing about the state of the economy and the safety of children in schools. Then one of them mentioned something about a TV show with doctors winning a bunch of awards and the audience went crazy.

Dean put on clean clothes to sleep in and ushered Castiel in to the bathroom to clean up. Made him take his underwear in with him so he didn’t have an excuse to walk around naked, and stood by the foot of the bed rubbing his hair dry while the women on the TV talked about the doctor show and previewed clips of the upcoming season opener.

The title character was under review, could possibly be fired for his Maverick behavior, fighting with the plastic surgeon while one of their own fought for life. One of the doctors’ lover had died and another was leaving for ‘better prospects’ in another state. The actress was reportedly pregnant and this clashed with her character’s past hysterectomy.

Dean had his finger on the channel button, but hadn’t quite managed to push it. The TV women were bringing out a guest now, some tall brutally handsome man with black hair and blue eyes. He looked different out of character, black jeans and tennis shoes with a button down rolled to his elbows and leather straps and beads and little trinkets around his wrists. He had a leather cord around his neck with what looked like a bottle opener on it nestled in amid the dark springy hairs on his perfect chest. Dean’s toes curled into the knap of the carpet.

The bathroom door opened and Dean changed the channel quickly, reflexively, wound up on QVC or some shit. Castiel came out in his underwear rubbing a towel on his head and Dean looked at the clock, noticed ten minutes had gone by and he’d been standing there staring at some douche canoe actor with his shirt open like it was nineteen-seventy-four all over again.

The bruises on Castiel’s knees and shins were gone and the heat of the water had pinked his skin. He smelled like soap and tooth paste and a little like shaving cream. When he pulled the towel from his head his hair was standing up in every direction, soft and feathery and messy and… And Dean was feeling warm in the pit of his stomach. He shifted on his feet uncomfortably and swallowed past the dry feeling in his throat.

How the hell was he going to sleep next to that?

Castiel was already at the bed, had chosen the side closest to the door and turned down the covers. The sheets made crisp noises against themselves, Dean expected them to be crinkly and uncomfortable, but he was wrong, so wrong.

Castiel laid down on his back fingering the edge of the quilt, and Dean stood there for a minute pulling the front of his t-shirt down over the front of his boxers before he shook himself, exhaled mightily, and turned off the lights.

Sputnik grunted and pranced in circles before launching herself onto the foot of the bed, padded in little circles until she’d found a comfortable spot and bedded down with her towel under her head.

The dark helped, but not by much. Not when Dean’s arm brushed Castiel’s and his skin felt like it had spontaneously ignited. He curled in on himself, back to the angel and pulled a pillow to his chest, tried not to feel like this place was too much, or too open or too vulnerable because there were luxuries. He’d prepared the room just as he had any other hotel. Salt at the windows and door, sigils scrawled in wax across the window ledge, baseboard and above the door. They would not be seen, they would not be sensed. This place was just as safe as any motel and motor lodge Dean had stayed in before. It just happened to be very nice and kind of expensive and clean—yeah, clean, mmmm.

Castiel started making soft breathy noises in his throat and when Dean turned his head to peer across the darkness at him, he saw the angel’s borrowed face tilted to the side, body boneless and sprawled. Castiel had absolutely no trouble falling asleep, but, Dean was confident Castiel would be awake in a fraction of a second if there should be an issue.

Dean turned over and watched the rise and fall of his chest, the shift of muscles under his skin. Stared at the scar above his heart and pressed a fist to his own chest, imagining the grace his veins being plucked from there, imagined pulling out a part of himself to protect someone he didn’t even know.

It didn’t take as long as he’d imagined it would to fall asleep. He dreamed of a little apartment in Kansas, of a familiar face. Dinner with his mother and brother and brother’s fiancé…

Dean dreamed of hands pressing against his skin, dragging callouses against his sensitive places. He dreamed of pale words turned flesh, slick fingers sliding deep into him. Urgency and need and l—

The burn of fingers removed, the blunt push into his body and—

Heat, the unfamiliar pressure of being held open, pressed apart and into. He remembered the hurt of it, more of a dull ache than anything urgent, those eyes and soft words breathed into his neck and ear. How easy it was to let himself be moved and worshiped with lips and hands and the stroke of another body—

Something warm wrapped around him, as if it had always been there, all-encompassing and all-seeing. Cas groaned in his arms, and Dean held tighter, kissed and let the points of his teeth raise goose flesh along the other’s throat and chest.

Their fingers met and tangled together and Dean rolled them, pressed those hands down into the pillow, saw galaxies in Cas’ eyes, felt the world quake when those pink lips parted and moans came out. They were wrapped up together, physical and more than physical and Dean felt hands on him where there were no hands. Felt energy crackle against his skin and soul like lightning across the horizon.

Dean felt himself as a cosmic puzzle piece, just part of a whole he’d been too self-centered to glimpse until now. He felt himself like the face of a new planet, molten and sharp, washed smooth with steam and a loving hand. He heard voices like music in his head and chest, felt them shaking between his ribs and knew their song.

He felt the being in his arms, immortal and burningSEETHING like a nebula, dark and fantastical like the night sky, all aglitter with stars and moons and wheeling planets. Eyes wide and blazing like suns in shock and awe at the microcosm birthing between them.

Dean woke to a low cry, found shapes in the darkness that coalesced into the arch of Castiel’s throat as the angel’s chest pushed high beside him. Felt the crush of a hand in his own and saw a pink flush on Castiel’s stolen face, denim blue eyes thrown wide and dilated in surprise and ecstasy.

Dean saw it crash through him like a wave, saw because the blankets had been kicked off and Castiel had crawled into bed only in his underwear and there was no mistaking it for what it was.

Dean watched because he didn’t know of anything else he could do, breathed in and held it so he didn’t interrupt. He gripped the hand in his as the angel came down, shivering and gasping quietly through the aftershocks.

Part of Dean wanted to warn that if Castiel had just learned not to invade his dreams, things like this wouldn’t happen, but he couldn’t scold him for it. One of them, at least, should get some enjoyment out of it.

Castiel lie there panting, sweat on his brow, fingers squeezing Dean’s. The only contact they had the press of their palms. Then he turned and stared at Dean with an expression of awe and incomprehension… That bled quickly into shame when his empty hand found the mess in his shorts. He lurched up with a wordless exclamation of fear and dashed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

0-0-0

Castiel didn’t speak to him again. Didn’t eat when Dean stopped for food, didn’t look at Dean when he tried to find the angel’s eyes.

Castiel was silent and cold and mechanical in everything he did, even how he breathed.

Dean tried to placate him, said something about there being no shame in having wet dreams. There was nothing wrong with it. Sometimes it just happened, wasn’t something to be ashamed about. It was human for christsake.

Dean fed Sputnik four orders of chicken nuggets and let her lead him around while she sniffed out a place to do her business in the garden by the McDonalds. Castiel sat straight and still in the car and didn’t acknowledge Dean or the dog.

Dean tried to be sympathetic… he tried bullying, then he tried fighting silence with silence and wound up driving himself crazy.

By the time he’d decided that pushing through to Sioux Falls instead of getting another room was the more sensible of his options, Dean was half convinced he’d done something unforgivable to the angel and had begun flagellating himself. Trying to convince himself that all the touches and sleeping curled into one another’s bodies hadn’t been what he’d thought it was. He hadn’t been teaching Castiel to act like a normal person, he’d been grooming him like a fucking pedophile.

It was dark when he pulled into the scrap yard. Bobby’s lights were on and parts of the yard had been cleaned up. Dean felt his heart leap into his neck when he saw an aluminum ramp, most likely pulled from an old delivery truck, turned on its side by the back porch. Bobby had cut some of the plastic sheeting away and moved some of the accumulated junk from the end of the porch. Had cut away the railing in preparation of attaching the ramp.

Dean’s skin crawled as he climbed out of the car and stared at it, in his head all he could see was the mess of twenty-fourteen and he wanted to grab something and destroy it.

It was real, wasn’t it… He’d been forcing Castiel into this and now the fucking ramp—Oh, Jesus.

Dean tilted his head up and tried to swallow past the nausea. No, please, no.

Bobby stepped onto the porch with a beer in his hand, looked Dean up and down and asked; “What’s wrong?”

Dean looked at him, looked back at Castiel as he climbed out of the car, and fled toward the garage without a word.

He found the truck sitting there, covered in old drop cloths, waiting. In a fit of hopelessness, he ripped the tarps back and went for the oscillating sander on its shelf. Shucked out of his over shirt and jacket, yanked on a pair of protective goggles and a bulky filter mask, turned on every light he could find and sat to work, sander braced against his chest.

Don’t think. Don’t think, just focus on what’s in front of you. Nothing else matters.

He scuffed down what parts he felt needed scuffed or rescuffed, ignored the wet drips fogging up his glasses or the clogged feeling in his nose. He took the air compressor to the body, blowing away all the dust and debris from months of waiting for him, popped the truck into neutral and put his body into it. Shoved and drifted its bulk out of the garage, one hand on the wheel, shoulder braced against the frame, and pushed it into the paint booth. Taped up everything with plastic and blue, shrugged into a pair of overalls and pulled on a hood, changed out his mask and goggles and grabbed the first can of paint he could find off the shelf, mixed it without even looking and closed himself up inside with the fans running on high and the air compressor blowing.

Bobby found him slouched in the old recliner on the back porch late the next morning, asleep with his chin propped on one paint smeared hand and the truck drying in the paint booth. It was pretty, understated but classic, Bobby couldn’t say he was disappointed because Dean always did good work. He just hadn’t expected him to take the truck in this direction.

Dean stumbled in for breakfast about the time Bobby was heating up a can of soup for lunch.

“Where’s Castiel?” Dean said, scratching his head.

Bobby jerked his chin toward the library. Sure enough, there was the angel, curled on the couch with Sputnik in the bends of his knees.

Dean stared for a few seconds, but didn’t say anything. Turned and spotted the bags with his prescriptions on the table amid a series of sketches and equations detailing where Bobby was putting in ramps and how he was moving things around in the library to accommodate a bed for Sam.

Dean swallowed a lump in his throat. “Hey, uh—I can help with this stuff.”

“From what I can tell, you’ve got another ten coats of paint to put on that truck of yours. I can do this, ain’t that much to do anyway.”

Dean hesitated then pulled out his wallet and dropped a wad of hundreds on the counter at Bobby’s elbow. “Don’t use that truck ramp.”

Bobby stared, his soup started to boil and still he stared at the money; “What the hell did you do, rob a bank?”

Dean shook his head, “Grace trumps ATMs.”

Bobby looked at him long and hard, gave his soup a stir and picked up the money, started counting it out with his eyes getting wider and wider and wider. “Do you know how much you’ve got here?”

Dean shook his head. He hadn’t let himself count it again after the first few, thought it might go to his head.

Bobby shook it at him; “You’ve got right at fifty-four hundred dollars here.”

Dean felt weak at the knees.

“Dean, I can’t take your money.”

“You’re not,” He rubbed his jaw with the jut of his shoulder; “I’m helping my brother… Just, don’t use that ramp.”

Bobby gave him a long, hard look and slowly started thumbing through the money in his hand again; “Any particular reason why?”

Dean turned to the fridge and searched for something to eat; “I don’t like it.”

0-0-0

Bobby took his old flatbed pickup to town and came back with a rattling load of treated lumber and cement blocks. Pulled his circular saw out of the shed and set up a series of sawhorses in the yard, then wrangled Dean into helping him; “If I can’t use that aluminum one you’ve got to pick up the slack.”

They measured and measured again, then cut, and Dean dug holes while Bobby dumped in wheelbarrows of quickset cement for footers. They had a frame for an extension on the porch and the ramp itself constructed within the first twenty-four hours. By the time the footers were dry and ready to support block Bobby had gone to town and returned twice with more lumber, fresh tin for both porch roofs, and a shiny new saw because his had crapped out halfway through cutting support joists.

Castiel appeared on the porch on the afternoon of the third day, just as Dean was helping Bobby settle the frame of the porch extension on the blocks. He didn’t ask what they were doing, but urged Sputnik back inside with a quick glance and appeared at Bobby’s elbow, said he would check the frame for levelness and put his hand in the approximate center of each stretcher.

A handful of long screws and bolts later and Dean was watching Castiel push nails into the wood with his thumb, securing each brace.

Bobby was sat on the extra blocks nursing a beer and watching with an amused look on his face.

With Castiel’s help the porch extension and ramp were finished by ten AM on the fifth day, new roof and banisters included. Bobby spent a few hours coating the ramp with what Dean was sure was spray in textured truck bed liner. But, he supposed, it would hold up better than that textured paint he’d told Bobby to buy, so he didn’t complain.

Sputnik liked it so much she scouted out a place under it for a nap and Dean took a few hours to himself, just sifting through the scrapyard in search of a new project. It wasn’t an accident that he made his way through the maze of cars to the spot Bobby had planted his herb garden, it was however, a surprise to see how it had virtually exploded since the last time he’d seen it.

He remembered sprouts and tiny ankle high plants, now they were gigantic, big red poppies the size of dinner plates, purple and blue delicate little horn shaped flowers on plants nearly as tall as he was. White daisy looking flowers as big as his face, and bushy white sage nearly to his knees. It wasn’t just the size of the plants, or the number, it was that they glowed slightly in the edges of his vision with what he immediately recognized as grace. His grace. Colorless, but flickering like flame.

He remembered pushing his fingers into the dirt and feeding grace into the fragile little roots, just relieved that it lowered the pressure in his body. He hadn’t really expected anything to come of it. Even with the abundance of deer tracks around the little garden, the grazing animal didn’t seem to have put a dent in the flora.

Dean brushed his thumb against the crimson petal of a poppy and let himself appreciate the supple velvet texture of it.

That’s where Bobby found him an hour or so later, on his knees next to the flowers pulling out weeds and removing discarded leaves and old petals. He watched the younger man for a while, let him have his thoughts, only interrupted when Dean found fruit hanging from one of the plants and his eyes widened.

“Heirloom tomatoes… They were only supposed to get this big,” He held his hands curved together, about the size of a softball. I sent a picture of them to Ellen and she said to save her one… Whatever you did to it, those plants weren’t supposed to start blooming until mid-July, and the tomatoes? I’m still out of my league with tomatoes.”

“I just played around in the soil.”

Bobby shrugged; “I’m not complaining, I’ve never seen poppy heads that big. I’m just thinkin’, maybe Next year I’ll dig out a bigger place, give you some more room to ‘play around’ in.”

Dean looked at him evenly, Bobby knew as well as he did that there might not be a next year, might not be a next week, but he was hopeful. That was all he could be, giving up was just too easy. Dean gave the flowers an appraising once over and chewed his bottom lip; “Maybe sunflowers… I remember seeing this huge sunflower once, had to have been as big as a hubcap.”

Bobby smiled wistfully and said; “My mom grew sunflowers once… I was ten I think. She put ‘em out front right by the house. They grew taller than the porch roof. I could see them from my bedroom window,” He scratched his head thoughtfully a weird little grin on his face. After a moment he looked up at Dean with something serious in his eyes and jerked his chin, “Come’ere a second,” And he turned and walked away.

Dean followed cautiously, watched Bobby’s hands swing as he circled to the other side of the house. Dean hadn’t been out there much, once or twice when he and Sam had stayed over growing up. There wasn’t much back there, parts of an old furnace and the cellar door, maybe a patch of briars.

Bobby had cleaned the area up a little, grass was starting to grow back where junk had once been piled, and he’d taken a hose to the shed, put a new tarp up over the sagging door. It was a lot smaller than Dean remembered, but the tangle of briars was thicker, most of them dead or covered in wilty gray-green leaves.

Bobby took off his hat and twisted it between his hands. “These were my great-great-grandmother’s, back when the old house was still standing,” He motioned to a section of foundation under the house at their backs.

Dean watched him warily, but curiously as he plucked a few dried leaves off the dead branches. “Damascus roses… She brought them with her when she Came Over, just dried roots wrapped up in a handkerchief. Mom stopped messing with them after…” He twisted his hat a little harder and something hardened in his gaze but it was gone in a moment because he glanced over his shoulder at Dean with something like shame on his face; “You can clean ‘em up if you want, but if you don’t that’s fine.”

Dean cocked an eyebrow; “Never pegged you as being sentimental about roses, Bobby.”

Bobby slapped his hat back on his head; “They had hips on ‘em as big as walnuts when I was little, and you’d be surprised how many spells and rituals call for rose hips.”

“Uh-huh,” Dean pursed his lips and gave the pathetic tangle of thorns a long stare. “I don’t know if there’s much hope, it’s a mess.”

Bobby sighed, “Well, just do what you can, I suppose.”

“Oh, so it’s all me now?” He watched Bobby walk away with a grin on his face.

“You’re the one with the green thumb, smart-ass!”

0-0-0

Dean came back inside around dusk with his hands and arms full of thorn holes and a pathetic look on his face. Bobby was in the process of reorganizing his bookshelves. He’d shifted his desk about three feet closer to the door, and moved two bookcases into the kitchen, the table back to the middle of the floor instead of shoved up against the wall.

There was an old brass bedstead set up against the wall by the window and Castiel was seated on the couch where it had been pushed into the far corner, flipping through a tome that looked to have been written in Russian.

Sputnik had found a new home for herself on a tufted old cushion that looked to be made of part of an old rug, she had a rawhide bone held between her front paws and was chewing happily. Saw Dean and thumped her tail but didn’t stop chewing.

Bobby grumbled at being pulled away from his organization and doused Dean’s hands and arms in peroxide over the bathroom sink, then supervised as Dean daubed the worst of his wounds with Neosporin and wrapped them in bandages.

Bobby made steak for dinner with mashed potatoes and canned corn, then retired early because he was old and tired by admission and left Dean standing in the kitchen putting books back on shelves with Castiel practically rubbing his elbows.

It was quiet, just the scuff of books against one another and the rare question ‘have you seen…’ or ‘where was…’ when relating to different volumes. There wasn’t much to do once the books were on the shelf. Dean tried passing time surfing the internet, but found himself hovering over porn urls because he was so bored. There were a few questionable spots of weather hovering over Idaho, but so far nothing had erupted and the only calls Bobby had gotten on the subject were more confused than anything, as if there were a few signs of demonic activity, but no concrete evidence, no possessions, no weird deaths. Just general oddity that didn’t set well with anyone.

Castiel came back in from the kitchen and took up the other end of the couch, sitting with his back straight and his hands on his knees.

Dean tilted his body toward him, mostly just to keep the angel from seeing what was happening on his computer screen. Dean wasn’t tired, if anything energy prickled his skin and ate at his nerves.

The internet lost its appeal and the gifs on the front pages of porn sites he couldn’t manage to enter, jiggled and writhed and made him feel slimy in his stomach and about as far from aroused as he ever had been.

Castiel took a deep breath and let it out. Dean hadn’t been sleeping, so neither had Castiel, not because he didn’t know how, but because it felt weird to lie there and let his consciousness drift, especially after what had happened in Indiana. Indiana, why did it always seem to be Indiana? The magnetic signature of the area had always seemed soothing when he’d thought about it before, but now it had left a sour taste in his preverbal throat.

Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if he had been able to pull back from the dream, maybe if he had been able to withdraw and let Dean have his fantasies he wouldn’t feel so frightened. No, frightened wasn’t the right word, wasn’t the right emotion. Why did it have to be so difficult? Why couldn’t there only be Loyalty, Peace, Righteous Rage, and occasionally Fear, as there had been before his ‘Darkening’. Why did there have to be all these uncertainties? These subtleties? It was enough to drive an angel to distraction, Castiel would know.

But, then there were the good things, the amazing things. Laughter and comfort. The warmth that spread through him when Dean was half asleep and nuzzled into his arms like an infant. Pressing his nose into the hollow of Castiel’s throat, or the hair behind his stolen ear. That pressure and NEED in his heart to protect and inspire joy and confidence in Dean, and squash all his negative behaviors. He CARED, and perhaps it was that which frightened him, not the overwhelming THING that happened during the dream he’d dropped into.

What if it happened again? What did it mean?

Dean closed his laptop with a snap and rubbed his eyes tiredly, pushed himself up and went toward the back door. “I’m gonna go paint… keep an ear open for trouble.”

Castiel focused on every sound around him. The scratch of a mouse in the walls, the drip of a pipe in the basement, the whirr of a fan upstairs in Bobby’s room, the snore of the man himself. He could feel the edges of Bobby’s dreams. Often chaotic, an angry face and shouted words, a sad woman sitting in the kitchen drinking gin, holding her sweater closed around her throat, slowly wasting away in shame and relief and loneliness.

Others were happy, Bobby is younger and crouched outback teaching Sam and Dean how to make slingshots out of medical tubing and sticks. Chasing Rumsfeld when the dog escaped his summer flea bath, imagining Sam and Dean laughing, even when they weren’t there.

Others were grey and underlain with grief and pain so thick it left a taste in Castiel’s mouth, rituals and an empty hole in his chest thinking of Sam out there all alone and Dean locked away in Hell with no way out. Castiel saw love in those instances, in all of them. Bobby acted out of love and hope and desperation soured by whiskey and too long alone.

Sometimes Bobby dreamed he was a young man, never drafted, he was lucky that way, joined up anyhow because he was just that damnably loyal. Spent only a few weeks in ‘Nam, not the jungle thank Christ, they’d had him in what amounted to a fuel yard, pumping jet fuel into barrels and pouring gas into cans to be sent out where it was needed. He got to ride in a helicopter three times and had his picture taken by some journalist hotshot who would likely win some sort of prize for gritty snapshots of bloody soldiers and napalmed corpses. He wasn’t there long, not like John was. No, Bobby was just there long enough to see what horrors the human mind could cook up, then the US pulled out and he spent the rest of his time learning mechanics. Came back home with the same rank he’d left with, nothing to show for it but a tan and a head full of another language. He’d learned some Japanese from a few guys in the training program who’d seen more action. Always found languages fascinating. He had a head for words, Castiel thought, had he made different choices he may have become a lawyer. Actually worked for the DA instead of pretending to.

Castiel sat there and studied Bobby’s sleeping thoughts and the memories that flew around like startled birds in his mind. Found Bobby in his thirties explaining to his young wife that he didn’t want kids, never had, never would. Felt his heart break when she looked up at him so betrayed and mournful of what she would never have.

Bobby stirred, as if sensing the foreign presence in his mind, rolled over and found the cool side of his pillow, squinted at the alarm clock and drifted back to sleep counting Greek sheep.

Castiel shifted his focus, found Sputnik’s dreams, but they were filled with sense memory and occasionally Dean throwing her tennis ball against the wall, letting her jump to catch it, or his fingers scratching through her fur, his voice murmuring indistinctly as the tension bled out of his shoulders.

Castiel climbed to his feet and wandered outside, found Dean in the paint booth laying down clear coat in its final breath thin layers. He peered in through the spy hole in the door and watched, heard Dean singing slightly off key while he worked, he had a Walkman shoved into the front of his overalls and headphones on under his hood. Every so often his hips would make an unnecessary swinging motion or his heel would sliiiiiide against the ground a little as he moved. He shuffled over to the mixing table and poured more clear coat into the reservoir, tucked his elbows close to his body and rocked his hips side to side, mimed a drum solo and turned back to the truck—He jerked suddenly, “Son of a bitch!” His head lifted, eyes honing in on Castiel’s face through the spy hole and his hands went self-consciously to his sides, body locking up, eyes scowling behind his goggles; “Learn to freakin’ knock, Cas!”

Castiel scowled; “I don’t wish to come in.”

Dean’s eyes rolled back and he gave his head a little shake; “I mean you don’t just stand there and STARE without announcing your presence. If I’d been armed I could have shot you in the face!” He turned back to the truck and made a steady right to left pass with the paint across the interior of the passenger door; “Like a goddamned floating head just standing there.”

Castiel continued to stand there and watch, but Dean wasn’t moving to the music anymore and as fascinating as it was to watch molecules of translucent paint adhere to the metal, Castiel didn’t find it as interesting as the movements of Dean’s body. He focused on Dean’s arms and hips as he shifted the paint gun side to side, the precision and patience it took and how measured and practiced each motion was.

Dean finished without a drop of paint to spare, whistled tunelessly behind his mask as he inspected each part of the truck from front to back, in every little nook and cranny he could think of, then took the sprayer and reservoir out of the booth, cleaned them and turned off the air compressor. He stripped out of the overalls and made sure the paint booth’s doors were shut tightly, paused by the utility sink in the garage to wash his hands and splash his face, then patted his skin dry with the tail of his shirt, looked Castiel up and down with a reserved expression on his heat pinked face. “What?”

Castiel looked at him, felt each twitch of his muscles as if they were his own but after a moment looked away, turned and shuffled back to the house.

Dean snorted, shook his head and took longer than he truly needed to clean up the mess he’d left in the garage, sweep the floor and put his tools away. By the time he was finished, the stained clock on the wall said four-thirty and every muscle in Dean’s body ached.

Bobby’s water pressure left something to be desired, but, he had a water heater Dean had joked was bigger than any of the ones he’d encountered in hotels. Dean spent a little longer than necessary cleaning the grime from under his nails and contemplated running a bath. He wouldn’t ever admit it, but sometimes it was just nice to let yourself go boneless in a hot tub of water. Relaxing in a way showers never were.

He’d caught Sam taking a bubble bath once, before there were deals and the world had gone to shit. Sam seemed perfectly content to lounge around in soapy water with a washcloth on his forehead waiting for his migraine medication to kick in. Dean wondered if they were worth it. What kind of damage would running a fucking bubble bath do to one’s ego? Sam hadn’t seemed to be affected, maybe… Just purely for his own curiosity, nothing weird or anything.

Bobby’s tub wasn’t exactly the right size for a man Dean’s height, it was an old claw foot thing with a leaky faucet and a rusty stain around the drain. Dean could just picture himself all scrunched up in there and suddenly going into a grand mal while he was trying to climb out, then falling back in and drowning in bubbles and lukewarm water.

He talked himself out of it before he even had the chance to look for soap, told himself it was too late and he was too tired to make such an effort, not that he was afraid of what could happen. So instead he washed his face and the back of his neck where his hair was starting to tickle and shuffled to the bedroom.

He didn’t really bother getting under the blankets, it was still warm enough that the thought of the quilt just made his skin itch, so he slid beneath the sheet on his stomach and pressed his cheek into the pillow, curling one arm under it above his head.

The room didn’t feel right. The other bed was empty, the mattress was too small and too large in the same instant. He felt chilled and made of wrong angles. After thirty minutes of tossing and turning and pounding his pillow he sat up and dropped his head forward, stretching out the muscles of his neck.

It was ridiculous. Six nights without Castiel RIGHT THERE smashed up against him, all elbows and boneless limbs and soft snores. Dean hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a week and it was his own fault.

_You pushed him. You tried to make him something he’s not—butheis—but he’s NOT! Angels remember souls, he would have remembered you and he doesn’t._ He inhaled sharply and flopped backward over the mattress hands pressing roughly into his face. _Stop it. Either he is, or he isn’t, make up your goddamned mind!_

And that was the crux of the matter. Was Castiel the angel actually and truly HIS CAS, or was something going on, had something MADE Dean see him—Had he been wrong about the djinn’s poison and it really did show you…

Dean flailed angrily and cocooned himself in the blankets, wriggled like a worm up the bed and tried to suffocate himself in the pillows. He was acting childish, he knew it. Felt it in his gut and his chest and the back of his mind where a little voice that sounded like his father liked to rage and tear things up.

_Just make up your mind, do something about it or stop sniffling like a little girl._

He turned his face back to the air and exhaled slowly, pulled it back in and pushed it out again, counting backward from ten. Make up your mind, there’s no time for this bullshit. He laid there feeling like a slug or something equally spineless because he couldn’t force himself to get up and face this.

He had vague, burning, painful dreams, but hadn’t been able to delve deep enough into sleep to remember the details, or relax enough for his body to respond. Instead he woke up barely two hours later for no reason other than his internal clock was shot to hell and he just had that awesome Winchester luck.

Bobby was yawning, standing over the stove in yesterday’s jeans and t-shirt with a frying pan in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. There was a slab of Canadian bacon sizzling amid a few of its fellows, and a thin whisp of smoke was coming out of the toaster.

Dean was pretty sure that was the same toaster that had been there in the nineties but chose to say nothing, just stole a slice of meat from the pan and slapped it onto a folded piece of bread, shuffling away before Bobby could aim a kick at the seat of his pants.

Castiel was on the couch, contorted into a fetal position with his head bent over the arm.

“You two have a fight?” Bobby said softly from the kitchen.

Dean narrowed his eyes in the older man’s direction, chewing loudly. “Huh?”

Bobby tilted his head toward Castiel; “I ain’t dumb… You and him been—“ He dipped his shoulder out then brought it back up emphatically.

Dean felt like he was translating ancient Greek. He made the gesture back with one eyebrow up questioningly.

Bobby did it again, “You know,” When Dean continued to stare at him he rolled his eyes; “There was only one bed in that room, Dean. Don’t take a genius to read between those lines.”

Dean suddenly lost his appetite. “I’m not sleeping with him!”

Bobby lifted his eyebrows and tilted his chin down.

“Not—not in the… in the sex way. Just—just sleeping,” Totally platonic sleeping, that’s it. Dean rubbed his face, “It’s the only way he can recharge his mojo.”

“That why he’s actin’ like he was when he didn’t have any?”

Dean couldn’t force himself to look at Castiel; “No… I think something’s wrong with him. He doesn’t know what it is, I don’t know what it is, but something isn’t right.”

Bobby’s jaw clenched and he thought quietly for a moment before he spoke; “Is this something we should be worried about?”

“I don’t know, but its something we need to keep an eye on… He couldn’t feel Sputnik. He couldn’t find her when he looked, and couldn’t tell where the zoofreaks were.”

“Xuphrek,” Bobby flipped the bacon.

Dean stood there staring at the curl of Castiel’s vessel, imagined that, perhaps he was cold and uncomfortable despite how soundly he appeared to be sleeping. Maybe it was like a kid thing, he was just so tired he didn’t care where he fell asleep or in what position.

“Dean, could it be one of the other angels? This Zechariah? Castiel said something about the grace being controlled, that’s how he’s cut off from heaven. Could they be doing this to him, since he found a way around their blockade?”

“Doing what? Making his senses go haywire?”

Bobby didn’t want to say it, didn’t want the possibility of it to be true, but well; “What if they’re poisoning him through you?” There it was.

Dean looked for a moment insulted… then horrified. His gaze went to the outfield and he stood there over Castiel, looking at him but not seeing. Lost in his head.

It made sense. As much as Dean didn’t want to admit it, the closer he and Castiel had seemed to become, the more little things went wrong.

_What if they are? What if, since they can’t cut me off like they did him, they decided to hurt him through it, through me?_

One of Bobby’s phones started ringing but Dean wasn’t really paying attention, too focused on the rise and fall of Castiel’s chest, or the dark circles growing under his eyes. The pallor of his skin.

“Dean!”

He inhaled and turned, met Bobby’s eyes with his eyebrows up, then glanced away quickly to recenter himself; “Yeah?”

Bobby was dumping the bacon onto a plate; “They just boarded the plane, get him up and fed, willya?”

Dean blinked; “Who got on a plane?”

“Your brother, Ellen, and Jo.”

Dean blinked in surprise; “They’re coming now?”

“Where you been the past week? That’s the whole reason I brought Ellen’s car back,” He slotted a few more pieces of bread into the toaster, wiped his hands on his shirt, slapped a slice of bacon on a slightly blackened piece of toast and wandered off upstairs chewing.

Dean stood there for a moment breathing, elated that Sam was out of the hospital, but terrified of seeing his brother every day confined to a wheelchair. How the hell was he supposed to deal with that?

Dean stared down at what was left of his sandwich, stomach bubbling, and with a sigh tossed it in Sputnik’s direction and went to wake Cas.

0-0-0

Dean did the dishes. Then he mopped, and swept and contemplated washing the windows. His hands were itching and his thoughts were naught but a low buzz, flying past too quickly to be seen or categorized. He was anxious, and wound up mindlessly cleaning anything he could find as a way of restoring order to his thoughts and surroundings.

Bobby came down from a shower wearing clean clothes and a less heavily frayed cap, took one look at the kitchen and library and hallway and said he’d forgotten the countertops had a pattern on them.

Dean dumped the contents of the dustpan outside into the bushes and hefted the garbage out of the can onto his shoulder. He disappeared outside long enough to lob it over the gate out front into the plywood box by the road. Then took a moment to stare at all the work he, Bobby and Cas had done, and breathe out in relief that it looked nothing like what twenty-fourteen had looked like.

It’s different so it can’t happen. It’s different so it wasn’t real.

Dean searched Bobby’s pantry nervously while he waited for the older man to return, found an open package of saltines and sat down at the kitchen table with them. Made himself eat because his stomach was upset and he didn’t want Sam to know, just by looking at him, that he hadn’t been eating like he should.

Castiel was still sitting on the couch, like a freakin’ statue and Dean wanted to go over and mess up his hair to make sure he was still alive. Something, anything!

Dean FELT them coming. It was an eerie sensation, like the tension that built in his head before a seizure. He damn near thought it was an aura before he heard Ellen’s car pull into the yard. Slow, slower than Bobby usually drove—He probably wasn’t driving now that Dean thought about it.

He was on his feet, scattering cracker crumbs from his shirt, chewing quickly to clear his mouth and halfway out the door by the time the SUV stopped in the yard.

Ellen was behind the wheel, Bobby in the passenger seat and Sam was behind him, window rolled down, a pair of sunglasses perched on his nose. Dean could see the oxygen cannula, and the incredible pallor of Sam’s skin, but his brother was smiling, laughed and called out the window; “Hey, Sputnik!”

Dean only noticed then that he was standing there with the door open and Sputnik had escaped, was prancing and yapping excitedly by Sam’s door.

Jo climbed out first, stretched her arms over her head and yawned like she meant to unhinge her jaw. She shuffled around the car and popped open the hatch, gave a grunt and pulled out the wheelchair.

Dean had to practically kick himself to get breath back into his lungs.

It was too high, the car was too high, Sam was going to fall and hurt himself and—and…

And Bobby was out of the car now, had Sam’s door open and Dean couldn’t watch, kept hearing that sick CRUNCH of breaking bone, how Sam had just folded up like tissue paper as he fell—

“Stop it.”

Someone had told of his face and Dean blinked rapidly to clear his vision, found Ellen standing there looking at him like she wanted to yell at him.

“You stop it, Dean. He’s OK. The doctors said it was a damned miracle he recovered as fast as he did. It’s just a wheelchair, he’s still Sam. He’s exactly the same as before, you understand me?”

Dean’s mouth felt dry and salty and tasted distinctly like stale crackers; “What?”

“Kid, I know that look. Sam had that look on his face half the time we were there, and I’m gonna tell you the same thing I told him; This doesn’t change who he is, or how smart he is or how strong. All it does is make going down stairs a bitch…” She paused, looked him in the eye and ground her teeth, “So help me, Dean if you try to push him away because of this I will slap the shit out of you, understand?”

He took a second to let that sink in, then nodded, and nodded again to cement it in his own mind. “How?”

She let him go, brushed crumbs from his shirt; “How what?”

“How is he?”

She snorted and pushed past him into the house; “Ask him yourself.”

Dean turned his eyes back to the car, squinted when the sun decided to peek out from behind the clouds and saw Sam was already in the chair, was scratching behind Sputnik’s ears and smiling at the bows on her head.

“Sputnik,” He said with a laugh; “Did you get all dressed up just for me?”

She was whining and jumping, wiggling all over in excitement.

Sam stuck a hand into the pocket on the front of his jacket and pulled out something wrapped in a paper napkin, made infantile cooing noises and unwrapped what looked like part of a chicken breast, fed it to the dog as if he didn’t know anybody was looking and bent his head down to press against her brow.

It was sudden and entirely involuntary, but Dean’s vision slid to the side and he saw the gold of Sputnik’s color reaching out and connecting with Sam’s, a sparkling, dazzling bubblegum pink where they met. Sam—Sam’s color hadn’t really changed. Some of the black had receded, giving way to threads of that candy-apple red that made Dean breathe a little easier, but there was no abrupt end to it at Sam’s waist, no indication whatsoever, that his color—or soul or whatever it was— had been affected. He was dim, likely from stress and tiredness, but Dean had seen worse—so much worse.

Bobby pushed past him carrying Ellen and Jo’s bags, handed them off to the woman and went back out to help Jo carry in Sam’s things.

There was a machine with little wheels on it, about the size of a cooler, blue with a lot of tubing, and two boxes of what Dean knew were medical supplies, then Sam’s backpack and toiletries.

Sam looked around and took a few deep breaths through his nose as he sat up. Dean couldn’t see his eyes and had no way of reading him, just had a tight knot in his stomach that interfered with his breathing.

“You gonna say ‘hi’ or just stand there, Dean?”

He shook himself, made a hollow sound in his throat and looked away for a second, then back. Sam was grinning, crooked and perhaps a little wary.

Dean shrugged; “You seemed preoccupied with the dog.”

Sam nodded, swallowed and turned his focus to the ramp; “Well, this is new, I thought Bobby was gonna use the thing from the ice cream truck—“

“It was broken.”

Sam’s eyes peeked up over the rims of his sunglasses; “Broken… Okay,” He didn’t ask, just set his jaw and gripped the wheels of the chair.

It wasn’t the first time Dean had seen him in the wheelchair, it was however the first time he’d seen Sam moving himself along in it. Sam seemed focused, but relaxed, breathed in when his hands lifted and out when they pushed down.

“Need some help?”

Sam shook his head; “Nope!” And made his way up the ramp, Sputnik jogging along in front. “You just focus on the cheering section.”

Dean snorted and when Sam rolled past he called; “Watch my toes, bitch!”

And Sam’s breath shot out in a huff of laughter. His eyes seemed to light up over the tops of his sunglasses. He shook his head and the tension in his shoulders seemed to bleed away. “Jerk.”

It took him a moment to get over the threshold into the kitchen but Sam made it, took a moment to flex his fingers and peer around the room; “Bobby… did you clean?”

The older man snorted and gave Dean a pointed look but said nothing.

There wasn’t much to do. Sam was tired, Ellen and Jo were tired, Castiel was still pretending to be catatonic, although if Sam spoke to him he would reply. Maybe, Dean thought, it’s just me he doesn’t want to talk to.

Dean leaned his shoulder against the door jamb and watched Sam move around the room. Watched as he plugged up the little black backpack sized oxygen concentrator hanging on the back of the wheelchair and explained the big blue one to Bobby. Dean scratched his shoulder, tried to pay attention to how these things worked but his mind kept slipping, or focusing on Sam’s knees and thinking they looked smaller, that Sam had already lost muscle mass and it was scary. Dean’s teeth found the divot of scar tissue on his lower lip and pinched it between his teeth, kept biting until the frantic beat of his heart and the taste of blood became part of the problem instead of a distraction from it. He squeezed his fingers together, trying to stop their shaking, but couldn’t. There was too much nervous energy, too many thoughts and fears. How was Sam going to hunt like this? Maybe—maybe Lucifer would leave him alone since he couldn’t walk. Maybe they could find away around this whole mess— Maybe Lucifer was an angel and, like Zechariah had said about Michael, was powerful enough to heal wounds caused by gace. Maybe is was another manipulation, another way to break them down and force them to say yes.

What were the angels doing? What was Lucifer doing? Was Michael planning to jump Dean’s bones while he was asleep? What kind of protection had Castiel offered him, climbing into his dreams that Dean hadn’t known about? What were the demons doing? Why was everything quiet? What kind of storm were they about to be knocked down by? What kind of plan was in motion that would leave Dean staring into the Devil’s eyes through his brother’s face?

There wasn’t a snap, although Dean figured there should have been. He just suddenly couldn’t stand the sound of his own thoughts, couldn’t stand the burn of anxiety and adrenaline shooting through his veins. Fight or Flight, as they said… And Dean didn’t have anybody to fight. So, he grabbed Sputnik’s tennis ball and fled, spent a while standing in the yard throwing it for her enjoyment while Sam got acquainted with the reorganization of Bobby’s house and Ellen called the hospital in Sioux Falls to confirm Sam’s appointment the next morning. By the time Sputnik was tired and panting it was quiet in the house.

Bobby was downstairs doing something in the panic room, Ellen and Jo had gone upstairs for a nap and Sam— Sam was talking low, making soft ‘uh—‘ noises every so often in discomfort.

Dean eased the partition open a crack and peered in, saw Castiel sitting on the couch in practically the same position he’d been all day, and Sam in front of him, book forgotten on his lap. He could just make out what they were saying; “—don’t know, Cas… I mean, what do you want?”

“I don’t want.”

“You have to want something.”

“How do you know if you want something or not?”

“Well, uh— if you like something, and you enjoy having it frequently, then you want that something.”

“I enjoy waffles with syrup.”

“Okay, well that’s something you want! This—this is similar… uh— think about it for a while, what—uh—what you’ve done and what ha-happened, and uh—you… you ask yourself if you want it or not.”

Castiel rubbed his neck; “I don’t know, it had never happened before… I was surprised—and frightened.”

“Well,” Sam made a soft noise in his throat, like he was trying to cough; “uh—It—it felt good, right?”

Castiel looked at his hands, pressed as they were between his knees.

“Okay… Things— Things can feel good and still not be something you like, or want… I— I mean, like, picking your nose feels good sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you want someone else doing it to you.”

“So, it was wrong—“

Sam sighed and rubbed his face, “No, Cas—look, I’m saying, this is something you have to figure out on your own. What you like and don’t like, WHO you like and don’t like. It’s part of being human.”

“But, I’m not human.”

“I know that, but whatever’s happening to you, you’re going to have to consider the possibility that you might have to live like one, and I know Dean wouldn’t want you putting up with something just because you thought he wanted you to… Especially not that,” Sam’s tone was far away, a mix of worry and exhaustion.

All Dean could see in his head was every time he’d woken Sam up screaming because some nightmarish version of Alistair was… What if he had been doing that to Cas? Unknowingly, just trying to find some kind of comfort and he’d been practically forcing himself on an angel! Dean ground his teeth and started to turn, shame a heavy molten weight in his chest, when Castiel spoke, softly, hesitantly and Dean’s heart leapt into his neck.

“What if I do? Want it.”

Sam made that uncomfortable ‘Uh—‘ sound again, and a couple more of those half cough noises; “Then, I guess, that’s something you need to talk to Dean about, just keep in mind that—uh—Dean’s kind of… emotionally constipated. You’ve got to ease into it… If you don’t he’s just gonna blow you off.”

“I think he said that in the dream… That he—“

Sam made a high kind of tittering noise in his throat; “Yeah! Yeah, OK, that’s not what I meant! But—uh— that’s OK, that’s—that’s something that happens too, and uh—”

Dean blushed to the roots of his hair and, just to make Sam shut up, he shoved the partition open and stalked inside. Sputnik came into the room after him but went straight to her cushion in the corner.

Sam’s face went white and he shifted his upper torso a little to the right, away from Dean. Like maybe he could feel the grace coming off him in waves.

Dean went to the side table by the couch and snatched up his computer. He said nothing, didn’t look at either of them, but stomped into the kitchen and sat down, noisily, at the table, leaving the partition open just so they couldn’t talk.

Castiel gave Sam a curious look and opened his mouth but Sam’s eyes widened and he gave a little shake of his head.

Castiel’s face darkened and the lights in the room flickered, his hands tightened into fists and a moment later with a sound like a whip crack he was gone.

Dean sat perfectly still, didn’t let himself look up, didn’t let himself think too much on that sharp jag of fear that shot through his middle. Where did Castiel go? Where wa—

Dean couldn’t explain it, couldn’t describe it but it sounded like noise from a radio in another room. Screeches like an old fax machine and rumbles like thunder. Caught vague mental impressions of somewhere cold and icy and dark. Blazes of light and sound that were so intense they became solid.

**_Anger._ **

**_Fear._ **

**_Uncertainty._ **

**_Uselessness._ **

**_Vulnerability._ **

**_Sorrow—_ **

Sam spoke, but Dean couldn’t really hear it, wasn’t paying attention. Didn’t want to hear it.

Dean lowered his face into his hands and breathed out, ground his teeth and—

“I fucked up… Sam, I fucked up.”

0-0-0

Dean found an old Nash near the back of Bobby’s scrap piles. The frame was rusted to hell, but the body was solid enough that when he climbed onto the trunk and leaned against the milky back glass he didn’t feel like he was about to fall through into the dirt and sharp shards of rusted metal.

The sky was most visible from the rear of the lot, around the house Bobby had installed lights that glowed slightly green and slightly orange, to deter thieves and allow a sort of barrier between the yard and house where one could see the approach of strangers.

Dean sat and stared at the sky and when that foreign hollow ache in his chest, a reflection of Castiel’s current state, came back into focus Dean tilted his chin up and called out. “Cas? I… Can we talk?”

At first there was nothing, just the crickets and night insects and probably that damned deer come back to munch the tomatoes, Dean cleared his throat and tried again; “Cas, I’m no good at this, man. Just come back and talk to me,” He swallowed a tightness in his throat, “Please.”

It was the same sound, soft, almost ashamed now. But the sound of giant wings in the air.

There was snow in Castiel’s hair, and caked to his jacket. His lips and fingers were blueish and he was visibly shivering.

Dean let out a breath and ground his teeth; “What the hell, man… You run off to the north pole or something?”

“Antarctica.”

Dean shook his head.

Castiel huffed in a breath and let the melting snow drip into his face; “I don’t understand this.”

“You and me both—“

“I’m not who you want me to be, Dean. I’m not him. Before I found you in Hell I had never seen you before… I will never be him.”

That tightness grew in Dean’s throat again, he nodded, choked it down like bile; “Okay,” It hurt to say it. Hurt because it felt like a betrayal. Felt like he was abandoning someone, like he was looking his Cas in the face and telling him that what had happened between them meant nothing. It HURT.

Castiel stared at him, jaw tight, eyes wary.

Dean rubbed his hands together and forced himself to speak; “Bobby thinks maybe Zechariah is using this connection or whatever I’ve got with Heaven to poison you… I’ve got to agree with him… It seems that the—uh—the closer you and I have become, the less control you’ve had over your grace.”

Castiel shook his head; “If that were true it would affect you as well.”

Dean looked at the ground; “Then we’re back to square one.”

An animal of some sort scurried through the junk pile across from them, made a racket too big for its size and Dean glanced toward it, found nothing interesting and turned back to Castiel; “What’re we doin’, Cas?” He felt himself smiling but there wasn’t any humor in it; “What are we doing?”

“Talking.”

Dean rubbed his face; “I meant, us. What are we doing about US? What do you want from me?”

And Castiel was quiet, thoughtful before he spoke; “I wish to see an end to the apocalypse. I desire the truth behind the lies I’ve been told for eons… I—“ And he stops, takes a shaking breath and Dean thinks maybe this is some kind of end, an end before they’ve even had a beginning. “I want you safe.”

Dean didn’t know if he had ever known what ‘safe’ means. Didn’t know if there was even such a thing as ‘safe’ that didn’t involve captivity and ignorance and blindness to the corruption around you. “Well, that’s not gonna happen… So, what else do you want?”

“Peace.”

Dean chuckled and the sound seemed lost to the night.

Castiel’s head shook a little, melting snow splattering off into the dirt, disappeared into the heat of the night.

“You.”

Dean stopped laughing.

Castiel’s head tilted in the other direction, it was a very bird like motion, like he was fighting to focus on Dean, but couldn’t because he was so still. “I’m not human, Dean… I’m not supposed to want things, but I do.”

Dean couldn’t look at him.

“They said I’ve darkened… that something is wrong with me. I—I don’t know what that means. Have I darkened?”

Dean looked at him and away, had to fight with himself to pull his gaze back to the angel. He shook his head. Every angel Dean had seen, other than Castiel, was naught but burning terrible brightness. When he looked at Castiel he saw everything. Saw a miracle shoved into the shape of a man and he had no idea how to articulate that so he just shook his head; “No.”

It seemed to put some ease back into Castiel, but at the same time a line of friction appeared on his brow. “I’m falling… That explains it,” He turned his face skyward. “I’m falling and I can never go back.”

“Do you want to? Knowing that they’ve lied to you?”

“It’s my home.”

Dean wetted his lips; “Homes are overrated. If you’re not welcome up there anymore—fuck ‘em. Bunch of dicks anyway, we’ll find someplace better.”

Castiel turned and stared at him. “That’s blasphemy.”

“’s it look like I care?” He held out his hands, fingers splayed. “I mean, what do you think we’re doing here? Planning a tea party? We’re trying to stop the apocalypse, Cas. We’re throwin’ out the script and making it up as we go along.”

Castiel’s gaze didn’t waver. He didn’t blink, didn’t seem to breathe. He remembered, life ages ago, an older sibling telling him that God had created men different. That humanity was special in a way nobody could explain. They were kings of the earth, meant to rule over God’s creations. Fascination aside, Castiel hadn’t fully grasped exactly how different humanity was, how special. He looked at Dean, through his vessel’s eyes and saw a tired man, thinner than he should be, weary and sad, but—but through the fear there was something else. Determination. Castiel, Angel of the Lord, hadn’t ever seen a creature so determined. It was a dangerous quality, could mean Dean’s undoing just as likely as it could mean his victory. But it was different, it was special and so—so warm and he wanted—he WANTED.

Castiel moved slowly, inched closer and stared up at the sky, trying to find the perspective Dean held on the universe, trying to find some kind of alignment. Instead there were just stars and satellites and garbage. He felt disappointed and alone, crushed in the silence of his grace.

An airplane flew over, its sound following behind, racing to catch up: low and ripping, like an ache in the wind.

0-0-0

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	44. Heavy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special Thanks to Jessi, without you I would still be staring at this chapter and pulling my hair out. 
> 
>  
> 
> And, just because I'm curious. Abby, if you're reading this, I so caught you! OMG! HI! *waves like a lunatic* You have discovered my dark secret!

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There’s not much in this world, as pure as being able to take your hands and make something with them. Creation is probably more satisfying than destroying things, but Dean would take what he could get. The truck’s paint was dry. Pristine, flawless. He gave it a wax and buff, stepped back and admired his work.

“Not bad…”

Bobby came around the corner wiping engine grease off his hands, nodded his approval. “I thought you were gonna do it white like the original.”

Dean shook his head, flexed his jaw; “Changed my mind.”

Bobby nodded, didn’t really care truthfully. He’d bought the thing about five years ago off some nervous red head. She hadn’t even tried to haggle with him, just took the money he offered for the scrap value and skedaddled. Bobby had felt kind of sour about it for two or three days, knowing he’d low balled her. The truck could be fixed and was worth more than the four-hundred he’d given her for it. The body was sound save where it had been sideswiped and the glass broken out. The engine could be replaced, and the upholstery wasn’t too shabby. Worn, but in a good way, in a way that said the truck had been well loved.

Dean had done a better job with it than Bobby would have, simply because most of the cars and trucks Bobby got running again went to hunters and most hunters don’t give a shit what their cars look like, as long as they’re older so there’s no risk of computers being tracked. Dean cared though. Dean cared a lot.

“Well, I got a couple ‘for sale’ signs in the office,” He lumbered off to get one.

Dean stood there staring at the truck and scratching at some turtle wax on his wrists. He’d planned all along to sell it, get it as far from himself as he could because the body lines were just right and it set something to aching in his chest. He buffed the hood again, wanted it to shine and when Bobby came back Dean grunted his way through the conversation. Ask fifteen, let them offer ten, take twelve-fifty. It was how things went. Dean felt a little light headed thinking about that much money. He’d repaired a few cars that came in before, but they’d always belonged to someone already. He’d never rebuilt one simply to sell, the idea of something he’d put blood sweat and FEELINGS into being worth over ten grand, it—well, it just seemed weird. How could something that he’d done be worth that kind of money?

Bobby circled the truck, crouched at the back and stared up the side. He couldn’t even tell where Dean had repaired or replaced pieces. Everything was just—just smooth. He grunted and dropped to his knees on the concrete, peered under it and checked for rust. “Damn, boy. What did you do to the frame?”

Dean crouched beside him and cocked his head. “It looked OK considering,” He rubbed his hands together and flattened himself on the ground, tried to find what Bobby was staring at. He let his eyes adjust and lifted his eyebrows in surprise, reached out and ran his hand over the steel. “Son of a bitch.”

Bobby stared at him. “Did… Did you mojo the truck!”

“No.”

“Then explain to me how that frame looks brand spankin’ new.”

Dean scratched at it with his fingernails, trying to find some kind of oxidation, but the metal was smooth and what was there rubbed off like mud.

Bobby muttered and with a huff of effort and a hand pressed into the back bumper, pushed himself up and chucked the For Sale sign across the room like a Frisbee into the garbage can.

“Hey,” Dean rolled into a sitting position; “What’re you doin’?”

Bobby ignored him, slammed through the drawer on one of his tool boxes and returned with a bright yellow EMF detector. He tested it against a shelving unit, then on himself and his expression became more and more pinched the closer to Dean and the truck he got.

Dean stood and dusted off his pants, took about ten steps away and stared uncomfortably at the truck, but the readings, and the high pitched squeal didn’t disappear.

Bobby’s shoulders sagged and he turned to Dean with a scowl, shoved the EMF detector into his arms and stomped a few steps away rubbing his brow. “You graced up the damned truck!”

Dean rubbed his neck and stared down at the whining machine in his hand; “I didn’t mean to.”

Bobby took the detector back and shoved it into a drawer. “Well, now we’ve got a truck that can do heaven knows what,” He shivered remembering the knives Dean had ‘charged’ and imagined what could happen with something that weighted two tons, “I can’t be responsible for putting that thing on the road in the hands of some towney idjit who don’t know what he’s dealin’ with!”

Dean huffed out a breath and looked away, “Well, what am I supposed to do with it?”

“I don’t know,” He rubbed sweat from his brow; “Drive it? Give it to Sam…” He sighed and leaned back against the counter. “You really need to figure out how to control that stuff. One of these days, you’re gonna grace somethin’ up and get someone hurt.”

Dean’s face darkened and he gave a cardboard box near his foot a savage kick. The used air filter in it skittered away with a few metallic sounding clinks against the concrete.

Bobby took his hat off and fanned himself with it; “Where is Castiel, anyway?”

Dean mumbled.

“What was that?”

“He’s looking for God… We—He decided he could look faster without me.”

“Ain’t his grace actin’ up?”

Dean went to the sink in the corner and started scrubbing his hands; “He’s got a phone.”

“Dean—“

“Look, it’s his choice, OK. If we find God we can end this and he is gonna travel a lot faster without me.”

“Can he take care of himself?”

Dean snorted; “As long as he stays away from Pancake Houses, he’ll be fine. Little dude likes waffles.”

Bobby was quiet for a ten count, his arms crossed high on his chest; “And are you gonna take care of yourself?”

Dean gave him a double take, a little shocked, but at the same time ashamed. He looked back to his hands; “I’m working on it.”

“You shouldn’t have to do this alone, kid—“

“Bobby,” His tone was warning at first, but after a breath it softened; “I get that you’re trying to help, but I don’t—I can’t talk about this.”

“Can’t, or won’t.”

Dean twisted the tap roughly and ripped a handful of paper towels off the roll, scrubbed his hands dry and wiped the sweat from his face.

“Some people can’t talk about stuff like this… Some’s scared to,” He hesitated, “Just so you know that you shouldn’t be scared to. None of us are gonna judge.”

Dean continued shredding the paper towels.

Bobby hefted a breath and nodded, scuffed his boot against the dirt in the floor and pushed away from the bench; “Truck looks good, Dean. Real good,” He walked away.

Dean glanced after him, wary that he’d walked away instead of pushing the issue. Sam would have pushed. Sam would have PUMMLED him until he snapped. But, Bobby hadn’t. Bobby had stated his peace and left Dean to his own.

He clenched his teeth and dropped the tatters of paper towel into the garbage then went to the truck and slid behind the wheel. The pedals weren’t in the right place, the seat didn’t feel right and the steering wheel was too high, too close. He snuffed, caught the scent of paint and oil and turned the key in the ignition.

The engine rumbled into life. Small block, just like his baby, but it sounded different. There was a different life in the truck. He pulled it out into the yard and turned, saw the reflection in the Impala’s paint, sunlight glinting of chrome and blue. Bobby was on the porch, tilted his chin up and yelled;  
“That thing don’t have tags on it!”

But Dean was already pulling out onto the road. Needed wheels and an engine to get his mind rolling and these were new wheels, new pistons, new thoughts, so maybe it was more than a test drive. Maybe it was a new perspective, a new road Dean had to see on his own.

Ellen and Sam had been back for hours by the time Dean returned. The sun was dipping behind the trees and insects were filling the air with the flutter of wings and a cacophony of mating calls. The truck had dust on it but Dean seemed satisfied. He parked in the garage again, rolled up the windows and locked the doors. Came inside with a quiet look on his face, pensive in a way that usually meant trouble.

Bobby looked at him from the stove as he bypassed the kitchen and headed to the stairs.

Ellen watched him from the kitchen table where she was peeling potatoes, gave Bobby a displeased look and started to push to her feet, but Bobby shook his head, gave her a look that said ‘Wait’.

Jo came in from the den and dropped her beer bottle into the bin in the corner then went back.

Tension bred in the air like dust motes.

He didn’t come back down until Ellen yelled up the stairs that if he didn’t come down and eat something she was going to come up there and give him another NG tube, “And don’t think I won’t!”

“Jeez, Ellen!” He shouted groggily back. He appeared rumpled with a ruddy puffiness around his eyes and cheeks. “Can’t a guy take a nap?”

“I’ve been awake since four-thirty and I haven’t taken any damned naps!”

“Maybe you should’ve.”

She swatted the back of his head as he passed but there was no real malice in it.

The kitchen was warm, even with the door open, and Dean smelled fried chicken and fried potatoes. He took the plate Jo shoved against his chest and poked his tongue out at her spitefully. Jo rolled her eyes;

“You’re like a child.”

Sam wasn’t in the kitchen and Sputnik was sprawled asleep on Sam’s bed. Dean peered around the corner and found his brother sitting on the couch with his jaw propped tiredly on his fist watching something on his laptop. He looked… normal. The wheelchair was folded up at his side, but he just—he looked normal.

Dean fanned himself with his empty plate; “Hey.”

Sam turned his head stiffly and looked up at Dean with drooped lids. He hefted an exhausted sigh. “Hey, yourself.”

Dean glanced at his feet; “The whole doctor thing go OK?”

Sam grunted and turned back to his computer, paused what he was watching and closed the lid. He rubbed his jaw on his hand and exhaled against the whispering of the oxygen concentrator. “I thought my upper body strength was good, I was wrong.”

Dean nodded, “You can handle it.”

Sam rubbed his head; “I’m not so sure that I can.”

“Well, I am.”

Sam glanced up at him again and there was something hopeful in his gaze. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’re John Wayne toilet paper. Rough, tough and don’t take shit off anybody.”

Sam’s mouth curled up and he made a series of breathy sounding chuckles. It was probably as close to a belly laugh as he could manage. He looked up again and his color flickered out a little wider.

Dean jerked a thumb over his shoulder; “Bobby made fried chicken.”

“And salad!” Ellen said loudly, forcing a bowl of greens into Bobby’s hands. ”Some of us have to watch our cholesterol.”

Bobby reddened but when Ellen leveled him with a cocked eyebrow and a defiant glare he shuffled to the table with a rebuked; “And salad.”

Sam nodded, then nodded again and put aside his computer. “Tell Bobby to clear some books off the table.”

0-0-0

Sam drank a lot of water. He’d always been less fond of sodas and sugary beverages than Dean was, but over the next few days he always seemed to have a bottle of water on him.

He was quiet, seemed detached. He would answer your questions, but his voice sounded flat, his eyes had dimmed and the black and red of his color had retreated into a thin corona at his edges. The only time it seemed to flare up was when Sputnik came to him with her towel, or her tennis ball, and demand attention. Sam indulged her, rolled out into the yard with his sunglasses on, the portable oxygen concentrator hanging from the back of the chair, and threw the ball until they were both exhausted and he would have to pick her up and settle her across his lap to get back inside. Sometimes he had trouble getting the chair up the ramp, but if anybody tried to help him he would snap and snarl as if he were a wild thing.

Part of Dean understood, Sam wanted to do it himself, he didn’t want to feel vulnerable—but Dean hurt in his gut whenever he saw his brother struggling. It seemed wrong not to step in stop Sam’s pain, take that burden for his own.

He tried once, and Sam had pulled his lips back from his teeth, eyes narrowed and filled with anger—his color had shifted, gone almost entirely black and lashed out at Dean like a battering ram. It had made his chest feel tight and his head ache.

“Stop it!” Sam had said, hands tightening like iron on the wheels of his chair; “Dammit, Dean! I said STOP!”

And he had, not because he wanted to, but because feeling that sharp stab of hatred from his brother loosed something primal and spiteful in his chest. He’d let go of the hand grips and left Sam suspended there halfway up the ramp, struggling to propel himself. Dean hated himself for it, but at the same time he just felt so angry and useless and childish. Fine, Sam. You want to suffer, then suffer.

Tuesday hung on the horizon like a black cloud, slowly growing closer and darker as the weekend progressed. By Sunday night Sam was practically silent, shoulders tense. He bit his words off between sharp teeth and stared as if his every intent was to maim you with his gaze. Ellen and Jo gave him a wide berth and Bobby just sat back and watched with his jaw tense. Even Sputnik stayed out of Sam’s way, had pulled her towel under the edge of Sam’s bed and was lying there peeking out at him warily, just a white muzzle and tiny black nose visible within the shadows.

Dean was getting restless, he itched under his skin. He couldn’t sleep, and when he did his dreams were filled with vague ambiguous shapes, people without faces, voices with no sound. Scenery flipping past like a slide show stuck on forward, there and gone too fast for him to get anything but the barest indication of the landscape. The only thing clear in any of it was a hollow hurt, a longing for something that he couldn’t name. Emotions in faded colors, sorrow, loneliness, and despair. Hope coagulated like old blood, sour, empty, and bitter on his tongue. He woke feeling exhausted, drained to his core with the sting of a chill in his skin even if he’d been burrowed under the blankets.

The bed was too small, too large, and too empty in the same moment.

Dean missed Castiel. He knew it, denied it, and felt it all the more potent with each passing breath. His fingers sought out the familiar weight of brass dangling on a cord around his neck, and found it missing. He seemed to be able to FEEL the chilled weight of it in Castiel’s pocket. Maybe he was wearing it, maybe it had fallen out of the hole in that old coat he was wearing. Maybe those boots were rubbing blisters on his feet and Castiel was too scatterbrained to find ones that fit properly. Dean WORRIED about the angel, and his worry made him brittle, made him feel like he was all jagged edges, cutting himself with every breath and move.

He couldn’t make himself eat, the food seemed to turn to ash in his mouth, what he did force down soured on his stomach and he started popping Rolaids like M&M’s to keep the ache at bay. He knew he should eat, knew it was unhealthy and Bobby and Ellen were going to start nagging him about it—but at the same time the emptiness of his stomach was a strange comfort.

Monday morning a man with a jeep on a roll back came into the yard looking for a steering column. He said he’d thought it was only the ignition switch, but apparently it wasn’t. Bobby didn’t let the man near the house, or even speak to him in full sentences. Dean jumped on the chance to get out and away from the static feeling of tension building between the occupants of the house.

Sputnik ventured out and laid on the porch in the sun with her feet in the air, belly exposed and wanting of Scratches. The stranger practically ignored her.

It took the better part of that evening to get the column out of the junker the man had found, and Dean watched from the far bay of the garage as he changed the oil and filter in Ellen’s SUV while the man started taking the broken one out of his jeep.

They didn’t talk beyond pleasantries and the odd vague anecdote. The man was a stranger and Dean was too wary. He helped get the steering column in and the wiring fixed, but there was nothing personal about it. Just work, a distraction from all the bullshit running around in Dean’s head. Honestly, he probably wouldn’t even remember the guy’s name by this time tomorrow.

Key and money exchanged the man left sometime after ten PM and Dean took a deep breath to steady himself before he went back inside.

Ellen and Jo were nowhere to be seen and Bobby was clanking dishes around in the sink a little harder than usual. The partitions were pulled shut and Dean could feel the tension in the room like cobwebs brushing against his skin. Bobby gave him an exasperated look and Dean ducked into the bathroom to wash his hands again.

From upstairs there was a thump and the murmur of raised voices. Dean paused, rubbing his hands with a rough brown towel, he tilted his head to the side and focused on the sounds from above, felt the world tunnel out around him and his ears ring before they found the women’s voices;

“I know he’s hurt, Mom, but he needs to deal with this. It’s not going to go away, ignoring it will only make it—“

“Pushing him isn’t going to get you anywhere. He needs to come around to it on his own, same as Dean. All you’re going to do, forcing him like that, is make him angry and he’s angry enough as it is.”

“I’m just trying to help, letting him sit around and brood like this is worse. All he’s doing is sitting down there beating himself up!”

“And your wheedling at him is only making him more defensive!”

“Well, somebody has to! Nobody else seems to give a shit that he’s hurting!”

“No, everybody else has enough sense not to go poking him when he’s trying to lick his wounds! The boy needs space, Jo. He needs to figure it out and WANT to be helped before he’ll accept it. Trying to make him talk about it is only going to make him force it down more!”  
Dean pulled back, didn’t want to hear anymore. He snuffed and scratched the back of his neck, senses tingling. Bobby was still at the sink when he came out and Dean shuffled past, thrust open the partition and gave Sam’s shoulder a light smack when he found him sitting there on the sofa in the dark. “Come on.”

Sam pulled away and snarled at him; “What.”

Dean pulled the chair out and unfolded it; “Come on.”

Sam glared at him, glared at the chair, and didn’t make to move.

Dean patted the seat of the chair, much like he did to entice Sputnik into the seat beside him. Sam’s scowl intensified and Dean could feel the tingle of its intent like a finger run up his spine. “Come on, Sammy. Don’t make me pick you up, you’ve been too big for that since you were seven.”

Sam wrinkled his nose up as if he intended to bite, but when Dean moved toward him Sam beat him to it, grabbed the chair and yanked it closer, locked the wheels and tiredly hefted himself into it.

Dean whistled merrily and grabbed the handles of the back of the chair and pushed forward, ignored Bobby’s concerned call of his name and shoved Sam out the door.

Sputnik startled where she was sleeping on the edge of the porch and jumped up, stretched and followed.

Sam blinked up at his brother cautiously and asked in a low voice where the hell they were going.

Dean said simply; “OUT.”

It had been a while since Sam had been in the Impala, it felt weird. He situated his limbs and leaned back in the seat, oxygen concentrator between his feet, one hand on the door, the other on the seat beside him so he stayed upright. He hadn’t thought to grab a pillow to wedge between himself and the door as a bolster. Sputnik jumped in before Dean and settled between them. The door let out a squeak as he shut it and the engine rumbled into life, headlights blazing.

Sam didn’t ask where they were going until they’d already pulled out and the road was peeling back beneath them.

Dean shrugged, “Just sit back and relax.”

They wound up just driving for a while, the radio down low. Dean changed the channel abruptly, just a few seconds into the intro to a song and Sam gave him a sideways look. “That’s like the third time I’ve seen you do that… Suddenly lose your taste for Foggerty?”

Dean gave him a scathing look that made the air between them practically crackle. They said nothing for a long while, Dean stopped to put gas in the tank, came back out with a bag filled with junk food  
garbage and when Sam asked why they were heading into a residential area Dean just grunted wordlessly.

Sputnik, however, seemed to know. Be it her sense of smell, or just something dogs knew, like when food hit the floor, or when you would look away from the plate on your lap long enough that they could grab something and run.

Dean pulled into a parking spot to the side of the nearest streetlight and cut off the engine. He didn't wait, didn't even hesitate, just climbed out and opened the back to get Sam's chair.

"Why are we at the park?" Sam wrinkled his nose, tried to be defiant when Dean opened the door for him and stood there seemingly patient, with his hands in his pockets.

Sam glared at him, scowled so severely Dean could feel the hatred in it. Dean just smiled back-- "Come on. Let's go, Professor X."

Sam sneered and all but threw himself into the chair, aimed the wheels at Dean's toes and didn't feel the slightest bit remorseful when Dean jerked his foot back with a curse.

Sputnik was dancing excitedly on the sidewalk, back end wiggling visibly under the happy thrash of her tail. She whined and licked her lips and hunched forward with her butt in the air, perfectly incapable of holding still. Dean snorted in amusement and glanced over his shoulder as Sam made it onto the sidewalk.

"What are we doing here, Dean? It's late and there's mosquitoes everywhere and—"

And Dean pulled something out of his pocket. It wasn't a tennis ball, wasn't that damned superball he liked to ricochet around Bobby's panic room. It was clear, round and made of rubber. He bounced it hard against the concrete and caught it, his fist blazing suddenly as the ball lit up.

Sputnik started dancing even more excitedly, yapped a few times and jumped at Dean's leg, pawing his knee as if she intended to climb him.

Sam blinked at him in surprise and caught the ball against his chest when Dean tossed it to him, stared down at Sputnik with wide eyes when she bounced up to him and looked back at his brother as if he didn't know what he was supposed to do.

Dean motioned exaggeratedly at the empty field; "Go nuts."

Sam scratched the tube in his nose and carefully locked the wheels of his chair, bounced the ball to make it light up again and threw it as hard as he could into the field.

Sputnik let out a noise like a shriek and went after the ball like a fighter jet. completely invisible save the pallor of her fur against the darkness of the grass.

Two more throws and Sam forgot Dean was even there. Didn't even mind the mosquitoes or the fireflies or the dog drool all over the ball. When Dean handed him a bottle of soda and a bingbong he tore open the packaging with his teeth and practically inhaled it. Laughed louder than he had in weeks and threw the ball farther than he ever had before.

By the time Sputnik loped back the final time, ball between her teeth, and collapsed panting at Sam's feet Dean could barely see the black tinge to his brother's color. There was just red and pink and something WHITE burning where the dog's color and his brother's met. It made something in Dean's chest tighten and the corners of his mouth twitch upward. He sloshed a bottle of water into Sputnik's bowl and let her drink, fed her a handful of pork skins and put her in the back seat on her towel.

It took Sam two tries to get back into the car because his arms were so tired, but he didn't complain, seemed to lounge in the seat instead of sit there stiffly.

Dean took the long way back to Bobby's. Let the radio play softly and the wind rush in the windows. Complained about his hair lashing him in the eyes and smiled when Sam huffed out a laugh and stole the last moon pie.

It was good. So good. Almost too good.

Dean told that harsh hiss of a voice in the back of his head that warned good things never lasted to shut the fuck up. He would have this, he wasn't going to let what might happen tomorrow take tonight away from him.

When they pulled back into the salvage yard at nearly two AM Sam didn't snarl when Dean caught the hand grips of his chair and made engine noises as he pushed him up the ramp, Sam just rolled his eyes and held Sputnik's still snoring little body to his chest.

Jo let them in, having got up for a drink, she stared at them from bleary eyes and shook her head, muttered that at least they weren't drunk and disappeared back upstairs.

Sputnik waddled to her cushion and collapsed with a sigh and Dean kicked off his boots, made a disgusted noise when his fingers found the dirt and grease in his hair and Sam snorted quietly;

"Go shower, you smell."

"Says the guy who ate bingbongs with dog spit on his hands."

Sam rolled his eyes; "The dog smells better than you, Dean."

"Whatever," He flapped a hand at Sam and made for the stairs; "'night."

"Dean?"

He stopped, felt his brother's eyes on the back of his head and turned with a yawn.

Sam was rubbing his palms against his knees, Dean wondered what that felt like, having your limbs be entirely numb and immobile.

"Thanks... For that— for the whole thing."

Dean shrugged, "You needed it."

Sam looked at him, curious and relieved and a little exhausted; "Thanks."

Dean tilted his chin in understanding and went up the stairs without another word.

0-0-0

Dean took him to Physical Therapy the next morning. He met Ellen in the hall as she was waking and said he would do it, to rest. She’d been handling Sam’s care since the beginning, she deserved to relax. She put her hands on Dean’s face and met his eyes, tired and relieved and fed up; “He needs you… He needs you more than any of us.”

Dean nodded and let her fuss with his hair, try to flatten it where it had crimped in his sleep. Then with a yawn she shuffled back into the room she and Jo were sharing and shut the door.

Sam was already awake, but didn’t look like he’d been that way long. He was propped up on his elbows in the bed with his head tilted back breathing deliberately. He looked surprised when Dean pushed open the partition and came in.

Dean hadn’t seen Sam’s stomach or back since New York, and then it had been covered in bandages. Seeing Sam change was startling. Maybe it was because Sam was used to Ellen being there and Ellen had seen it, maybe this was Sam’s way of reaching out with a little trust, but seeing the scar running the length of his brother’s abdomen and a plastic medical bag taped to his side made Dean stop and stare a little. Seeing that red line running from the back of Sam’s shoulders to the small of his back where the surgeons had put steel rods in made Dean ache in his bones. He knew it would make Sam uncomfortable, so he turned away again quickly, but he had seen it. Knew by the hitch in the sound of Sam’s movements, and the sudden electric tension in the air, that his attention had been noticed.

“It—uh. It doesn’t hurt.”

Dean didn’t say anything.

“That’s… this is just how things have to be for a while.”

“What?”

Sam pulled on a t-shirt. “It’ll be reversed in about six or eight months…”

“Reversed?”

Sam nodded, seemed to go tight and analytical, met Dean’s eyes and there was a professionalism there, in the tone and cadence of his voice. “Colostomies are reversible…” He inhaled and let it out; “It’s—uh— It’s kind of gross to change the bags, but it’s better than the alternative.”

Dean nodded, tried to block it out, but he knew Sam needed to talk. That’s how he worked. He TALKED about things. Explained it, analyzed it, dissected it until it made sense to him. Kid was screwy like that. Dean couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t pull out the stuff in his head, or in his chest and take it apart. Not because he couldn’t, but because he really didn’t want to. It hurt too much.

Sam talked, followed Dean into the kitchen and disappeared into the bathroom still talking. Talked while he changed his THINGS and put on a clean pair of pants. Talked while he washed his hands and came out to have a cup of orange juice and some toast Dean foisted on him, TALKED while Dean tried to eat, said the stoma was kind of cool looking, like a doughnut, and Dean said he was never going to be able to eat Krispie Kreme again because of this conversation.

Sam chuckled noiselessly. Dean took his pills and downed a cup of coffee when Sam’s back was turned, got Sputnik fitted into her new harness and lead and nodded a good morning to Bobby as he came down the stairs rubbing sleep from his eyes.

Sam TALKED all the way to the hospital. Dean kept telling himself it was nervous energy, Sam didn’t like the physical therapy, it left him physically and emotionally drained, and he had to keep this mask on around Dean. He couldn’t let Dean know how much it bothered him.

Dean couldn’t stand to let Sam know he could see through it like a wet t-shirt.

The physical therapist’s name was Greg. He was a big guy, even by Winchester standards, with thick meaty hands and a low voice. His assistant was a heavyset young woman with her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. She smiled at Dean and flirted a little, but lost interest when he didn’t respond.

The therapist recommended Dean stay in the waiting area so he took up a position in a corner, Sputnik resting with her chin on his foot, and flipped through every outdated copy of ‘WOMEN’S DAY’ and ‘GOOD HOUSEKEEPING’ and ‘MODERN ARCHETECTURE’ set at strategic points around the room.

He dozed off for a while, came awake with a start when Sam called his name. There was an edge to his brother’s voice, and his face was pale, but his cheeks were flushed, sweat beaded on his forehead. He checked his watch, noticed two hours had passed and rubbed his eyes; “Done already?”

Sam’s jaw flexed.

Dean’s brows pulled in curiously. “What?”

“Can we go?”

He pushed himself to his feet and tugged on Sputnik’s lead to wake her. It was hot outside. Not warm, HOT. The humidity hit Dean in the face like a wet towel and he balked at it, muttered and squinted as they made their way to the car. The seats were molten and Dean hissed and whined until he’d rolled his window down and the skin of his back had acclimated to the burn.

Sam seemed to melt into it, face pinched, jaw tense.

“You hungry?” Dean started the engine and backed out of the parking spot.

“No.”

Dean shrugged, nudged Sputnik’s head away from his thigh and turned onto the road. “Want a beer?”

“No, Dean. I don’t want a beer.”

“Something stronger?”

“Can we just go, please?”

Dean was quiet for a moment, thinking; “Wanna go to the park?”

Sam tilted his head back, chest lifting and falling exaggeratedly; “No… I—I just want to go back to Bobby’s.”

Dean glanced at him and away, then back; “You sick or something?”

“No, I’m not sick.”

“Then what’s up?”

Sam turned and regarded his brother silently for all of six seconds, then he turned away. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yeah, nothing.”

Dean nodded, didn’t believe a word that had come out of Sam’s mouth but decided to ignore it. However, he couldn’t ignore that TINGLE. He’d noticed it before, but never around Sam.

Sometimes when Bobby was working intently Dean could—could FEEL a buzz of activity coming off of him. Or when Jo was reading or watching TV, or when Ellen was particularly irritated or worried there was this pressure. Dean had never felt it coming from Sam. Of course, he hadn’t been around Sam much in the past few weeks, not since he’d begun to notice it.

Dean wondered, vaguely, what would happen if he focused on that buzz. Would he hear his brother’s thoughts? Part of him found the idea instantly off putting, but another part, a curious part—wondered if he really could.

“Sam?”

“What?”

“Could you ever… could you ever hear my thoughts with your freaky ESP bullshit?”

“No,” He said it too emotionlessly to be a lie. Then the tension ramped up in his shoulders and he turned his gaze to Dean. “Dean… C-can you hear my thoughts?” His expression turned from brooding to disgusted and he leaned toward the door, pressing on the seat to keep himself upright.

“No!”

Sam wasn’t convinced.

Dean itched under his skin; “I don’t know… I’m not hearing anything, you’re just—You’re thinking really loudly and I’m getting all this static!”

Sam rubbed his face tiredly; “You really need to talk to Castiel about this, man. It’s getting out of hand.”

“It’s not my fault!”

“How many lightbulbs have you blown up in the past week?”

Dean tilted his head and lifted his shoulders in embarrassment; “A couple—“

“How many ATM’s have you emptied?”

“That’s different—“

“Dean, you’re playing with this stuff! You blew a fucking gasket because I could move things with my mind in tight situations, but you’re hearing my thoughts and that’s OK?”

“I’m not hearing your thoughts!”

“You need to stop!”

Dean looked at him, expression uncomfortable, and looked back to the road.

Sam sighed, “Things weren’t this bad when Cas was here… He—he siphoned off all that extra juice you’re carrying and you didn’t have problems like this.”

Dean cranked his window down a little more, hoping the wind noise would make Sam’s voice easier to bear. All it did was whip his hair around into his eyes and make it difficult to see.

“You need to call Cas.”

“I’m not calling him.”

Sam rubbed his temple; “Why not?”

“Because he’s got more important stuff to worry about. In case you’ve forgotten, we’re in the middle of the frickin’ apocalypse.”

Sam’s shoulders deflated. “This isn’t healthy. Didn’t Cas say the angels could detect grace activity? If you don’t stop they’re gonna find us and no amount of lucid dreaming or branded ribs, are gonna keep them out.”

Dean glanced at him and away, color in his cheeks. He shoved his hair away from his eyes again, muttered a curse and pulled an abrupt U-turn in the middle of the street, nearly throwing Sam into the floor.

“Jesus Christ!” Sam snarled, hand braced on the door, the other gripping along the back of the seat to keep upright; “Next time we’re taking the fucking Prius!” He panted and turned narrowed eyes to Dean; “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m sick of this shit!”

“What shit? What’s wrong?”

“This—THIS!” He grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled on it. “I can’t take this shit!”

Sam blinked stupidly, and started laughing. It was a breathy quiet sound, but it irritated Dean even more for its thinness.

“Keep laughing, Sammy, and you’ll find a nasty surprise in your shampoo. Jo wears short-shorts remember?”

Sam kept laughing, though he had the decency to look away while he did it.

Dean hadn’t ever really been one to pay for a haircut. He’d grown up thinking the expense of it frivolous when he could take a pair of clippers to his own head as easily as any barber. But his usual haircut wasn’t an option if he wanted to keep the scars on his scalp hidden, which meant more to him than any free shorn head ever would.

He didn’t like being stared at, really didn’t like being stared at.

The barber was a woman, tall, with short black hair and tattoos up both arms. She was just finishing a squalling toddler when Dean and Sam came in, jerked her chin toward the sign in sheet on the desk, then the row of empty chairs to her left. “Make yourself at home, I’ll be done in a minute.”

Dean jotted down ‘P. Singer’ on the signup sheet and shrugged out of his flannel. “Is there, uh—anybody else here?”

The girl shook her head; “Pops split for the day, emphysema was working hard on him. And Mikey’s at the VA. You’re welcome to come back tomorrow if you want.”

Dean started to turn to go, but Sam had already backed his chair into the corner by the bathroom and a bored looking pre-teen who looked enough like the toddler and the woman keeping the kid still that he could only have been the kid’s big brother.

Dean remembered, vaguely, Sam’s first haircut. How Dad had sat them one at a time on the motel bathroom sink and buzzed their heads with noisy clippers that gave off a slight burning smell. Sam had born it stoically, and only cried later when he was supposed to be sleeping, pawing at his naked little head.

Dad had got tired of people calling Sam a girl. Besides, three was old enough for a haircut anyway. Dean wondered if maybe that didn’t explain why Sam liked having all that hair, a sort of ‘fuck you’ to Dad even after his death.

The toddler finally stopped squalling and released a few aborted sounding sobs around a wet lollypop while his mother paid the barber.

She dusted out the chair and with a few quick swipes of a broom had the baby fine hair in a pile and in the dust bin. She gave Dean an expectant look and with a sigh he slid into the chair. Wrinkled his nose as she threw a cape around his shoulders and tried not to look at himself in the mirror as she tucked tissue around his collar.

“Looking for anything in particular?” She plucked up a spray bottle and began liberally spritzing him with it, combing her fingers through his hair to wet it.

Dean opened his mouth just as her fingers found the scars and his voice hitched; “Just—uh— Just long enough.”

She nodded and spent a few moments staring at him in the mirror, not judging, but definitely appraising. Was this how it usually felt? He’d been to a barber before but they’d never STARED at him like that. Was it a female thing? What was this shit?

“You trust me?”

“Not particularly.”

She snorted, and spritzed him again behind the ear; “If you don’t like it you can come back tomorrow and Pops’ll fix it.”

Dean caught Sam’s eyes in the mirror, the asshole was laughing at him. “Feel like giving chuckles over there a high-an-tight?”

Sam wheezed.

The woman snorted and turned to regard Sam; “I think he’s serious. I haven’t seen eye daggers like that in a while.”

Sam tried not to smile too broadly; “He hasn’t had his hair cut professionally in fifteen years.”

She snorted; “Aw, am I gonna have to promise you a lollypop to get you to sit still?” She plucked up a clean comb and sat to work.

“Are you offering?”

“Yeah-yeah—Hope you like lemon, that kid took my last strawberry.”

Dean didn’t know what to think, he expected an electric buzz, but instead there were only the quick snips of black scissors and the tug of a comb through his hair. He could feel the weight though of every inch that fell away. Felt more and more of it lifting away.

His lids drooped and from the corner of his eye the girl kind of looked like Cas a little. Thinner, younger. And Dean started to imagine perhaps a young Cas—young barber Cas. Dean started to think of the time he’d had long hair years ago and accidentally caught some of it on fire during a hunt. Started to think those blunt strong fingers scrubbing against his scalp didn’t belong to some tattooed woman. He started to believe the hands tilting his head this way and that and the bump of knuckles against his ear belonged to an angel.

He didn’t doze off, shut up Sam. It was just—just kind of nice to have someone touch him, gently, without expectation. It was just nice to be taken care of—

He tried to pry his eyes open when he felt the comb raking the hair on top of his head to the side and heard disembodied voices, but couldn’t quite convince himself it was a good idea.

“…Since January, so that’s… seven-- eight months now?”

She hummed, “He shouldn’t worry, you can barely see them. Whoever his surgeon was did a great job, it’s hardly noticeable.”

“It’s just hard for him.”

“Hard for you too… I mean, I’ve heard of bad luck following families, but two car accidents? That’s just not fair.”

Sam hummed, “Yeah… We, uh—We’re doing better though.”

“That’s good…” She giggled; “Man, he’s OUT!”

“He’s like a cat, what’d I tell you!”

“You know I can hear you, right?” He felt like his tongue was a little loose, but the words came out anyway and sadly, the girl stopped touching him and knocked a few loose hairs from his collar. “Well, you’re done, what’s the verdict, trust me yet?”

He blinked stupidly at the mirror for a minute, shook his hands from under the cape and patted his head.

Most of the length was gone, the curls behind his ears still visible but now more messy looking than CURLY. Short enough that it didn’t get in the way, but long enough that there was no scar tissue visible when he turned his head. The top however, was still kind of floppy and he gave Sam a dark look in the mirror but pronounced it suitable, scrubbed his palms through it until his fingers got used to the texture then did it some more because hot damn it felt nice. Light and not at all fluffy at the back. He was startled however to see the pile of cut ends on the floor, realizing how much had actually been on his head. “There’s enough for a damn wig!” He stepped over the mess and shook out the back of his shirt.

He bent closer to the mirror and fussed a little more, because it felt different and nice and more normal than he’d felt in a long time. Sputnik sniffed the pile of hair before the girl could sweep it up and sprang away from the broom as it made a pass near her.

The girl turned to Sam with a wink; “What about you, hot stuff? I’ve got time for a quickie,” She leaned on the broom and regarded him with a shaded grin.

Sam blinked and fought a smile. Opened then closed his mouth and slashed the tip of his tongue over his lips. He looked slightly uncomfortable; “Maybe some other time.”

She shrugged, “Well, you know where I am if you change your mind!”

Dean grinned, tossed a twenty onto the counter and waved away the change.

The ride back to Bobby’s was silent, tense—but tense for the exact opposite reason it had been when they’d left the hospital.

Ellen was sitting at the kitchen table with a large tome open in front of her when they came in, she did a double take and looked Dean up and down, lips pulling up into a smile; “Well, don’t you clean up nice!”  
He lifted his chin, smug, and crouched to release Sputnik from her vest and lead. Sam rolled past into the den and plugged up his portable concentrator, turned on the stationary and heaved himself onto the couch, sprawling with a pillow under his knees and his arms crossed over his chest. He was quiet, pensive almost, in a way Dean dismissed as fatigue, so he ignored him.

“Where’s Jo?”

“She and Bobby went out to check on something in Ohio. They’ll be back by Sunday… Looks like you two are stuck with me.”

“You let Jo go alone?”

“She’s not alone,” Ellen scoffed, “Bobby knows what he’s doing, either it’s a cursed car or a vengeful spirit. Besides, she was driving me up the wall… You can love a kid to death and still wish they’d just shut the hell up.”

Dean stared and Ellen ignored him, kept paging through her book; “You boys ever heard of something that would make family pets attack their families?”

Dean looked toward Sputnik warily. “No, why?”

“One of Bobby’s contacts called, needed some information. Case concerns animals… mostly cats. Disappearing for three days, coming back and attacking their owners.”

“Rabies?” Sam said helpfully.

“No, none of them tested positive… It’s calculated attacks.”

Sam made a noise in his throat, like a huff, “Are they attacking in packs or individually?”

Ellen looked up; “Packs, that’s what makes it so weird.”

“Are there children in the houses?”

Ellen’s brows drew down; “Now that you mention it—“ She referred to her notes; “Of the dozen or so houses affected, about eight or ten of them had kids.”

Sam twisted the pull string on his pants, “Dean, you remember Dad talking about Pipers?”

Dean’s nose wrinkled; “Bagpipers?”

“No, like the pied piper? PIPERS!”

Dean pushed his chin up and gestured vaguely in front of him, made a rolling motion with one extended finger; “Yeah-yeah, they’re related to tricksters… Spirits that can control the minds of infected animals… it’s like a bite, isn’t it?”

“A venom I think, pretty sure it’s in his journal.”

Dean pushed back from the table and went for the stairs, took them two at a time. He came back down a moment later carrying the book, flipping quickly through the pages. “You remember what year it was?”

Sam tilted his chin up, “Late nineties? It has a post-it on it and couple news clippings.”

Dean grunted and flipped more pages, “That’s like half the pages in here,” He found it, simply because the paperclip had been replaced with a small blue one. The paperclips John had preferred using were not exactly high quality and eventually, no matter how much care Sam and Dean gave the book, they began to rust and leave splotches on the pages. Sam had taken to replacing them on entries he’d read with little plastic coated ones. Dean had a feeling Dad wouldn’t have been too pleased to see some of his entries marked with pink and purple and blue.

“Pipers… Found in forested areas mainly around caves and streams. Gorges itself on—jeez—on dead animal carcasses just before mating, or shedding its skin… Humanoid in appearance, with visible patches of multicolored scales on the inner wrists and back of the neck. Glands under the nails secrete venom— animal licks the hand, or eats something from that hand they fall under the Piper’s spell. Venom is toxic to humans, can be absorbed through the skin or through scratches, causes symptoms mirroring food poisoning. If not dealt with promptly the venom can kill… A weak Piper’s hold can be allowed to run its course, venom will fade with time. Severe infections can only be cured by—” Dean looked up, then back down, “Can only be cured by ingesting the piper’s living blood. Pipers can only be killed by decapitation, remains are semi-animate and lethal for up to twenty-four hours after death, burn immediately. Do not touch.”

Sam took the book when Dean offered it, read over the entry for himself and called Bobby’s contact, some man named Ramirez, to relay the message. The man said a quick thank you and Sam said to call back if he needed anything else.

Things were quiet until nearly three that afternoon.

Ellen grumbled and did Jo’s laundry, Dean stood and stared into the fridge like he was searching for Narnia and Sam did some complicated yoga stretching on the floor.

Dean gave up trying to find something to fill the hollow in his stomach and asked what the hell good all that Kamasutra bullshit would do. Sam glared at him, said it would keep his muscles and joints free, and that it just felt good. But afterward he got quiet and spent some time hitched against the front of the couch with his legs out in front of him staring at his feet.

Dean valiantly attempted to give Sputnik a bath, but as soon as he pulled out Jo’s hair dryer she wriggled out of her towels and darted out the door. Dean found her twenty minutes later in the den on Sam’s lap while he scrubbed her dry with one of Bobby’s old towels.

Dean rolled his eyes and tried not to complain too vehemently when he found Sam had stuck more of those damned bows her fur. “It’s weird,” He said half to himself, scowling at the little red frills behind her ears. “People look at her, then look at me and think things.”

Sam scoffed, “Like what?”

Dean gave him a long hard look. “What do you think?”

Sam balked; “I think she looks like a little dog with bows in her fur. It’s cute.”

Dean leaned forward and motioned to the dog with the flat of his hand; “Me and Cas go into some burger joint with her looking like that… People think things.”

“Well,” Sam bobbed his head to the side a little and wrinkled his nose apologetically. “Are they wrong?”

Dean’s mouth went dry and his back straightened, “Shut up.”

Sam cocked a brow suggestively.

Dean showed him one of his fingers and went to look for talking lions in the pantry.

0-0-0

Dean was upstairs propped against the headboard of his bed mindlessly staring at the weather map when it happened. It wasn’t the first time, but that doesn’t mean he was prepared for it. It started as a rash of gooseflesh up and down his arms and legs, a chilled pebbling of his nipples that wasn’t exactly unpleasant at first, but then became damned uncomfortable. He expected some restless spirit to manifest in the room, but instead he felt something within him connect and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt that someone—some ANGEL had just locked onto him. He didn’t know how, or why, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He yanked every tendril of his grace into himself and rolled to the side reaching for the shotgun propped against Sam’s old bed.

Then the sensation changed, became less honed, and more fog like, started PULLING away at the extra energy built in Dean’s chest in a familiar, calming way. Dean didn’t trust it, moved quickly and silently down the stairs and peeked in on Sam.

He was on his back sleeping, Sputnik curled up on his discarded pants in the floor. She had her head lifted and turned to look Dean right in the face. Like maybe she could feel it too—

Dean peered out the front window but saw no one on the path. He went into the kitchen and glanced out into the scrap yard—No one. He looked onto the porch… and saw a figure sitting on the stoop leaned against the banister with his shaggy head in his hands.

Dean didn’t open the door immediately. Just stood there and stared for a minute, sent out thin little ‘feelers’ of grace because Castiel didn’t feel right. Something felt off.

“Castiel?”

The angel flinched, as if startled and turned his head, blinked—and seemed to deflate.

Dean didn’t push the screen aside, simply stood there and stared. “You OK?”

The orange and green of the scrap yard’s lights made Castiel look anemic, papery and held too close to a flame. He wasn’t dressed as he had been the last time Dean had seen him. In fact, he looked like he’d been plucked out of Dean’s dreams. Raincoat, suit and that tie—Was Dean dreaming? Had he actually managed to fall asleep after more than a week of tossing and turning and dozing off into blood filled nightmares?

Castiel’s brows pulled down. “Your hair is different.”

“And you look like crap.”

Castiel’s lips thinned and his gaze dropped to his hands, empty and turned upward apologetically. He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t have to. Just like in the car earlier Dean could feel the restless buzz of the angel’s thoughts as easily as he had Sam’s. “What’s up?”

The angel’s head tilted in concern and his eyes flicked skyward.

Dean shook his head, “What’s wrong?”

Castiel made a soft ‘ah’ sound in the back of his throat and turned his eyes back to his stolen hands. “I’m weakening significantly faster than I anticipated. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“You didn’t,” Dean grunted and tapped his fingers against the stock of his shotgun, “You wanna come inside?”

He didn’t answer, just turned his face up again and squinted, trying to make out stars beyond the glow of Bobby’s yard lights.

Dean thought that pretty much figured, besides, he wasn’t entirely covered in mosquito bites yet. He settled on the stoop to Castiel’s right and sat the shotgun at his hip. When Castiel shifted closer, Dean felt himself leaning away, felt his grace, where it had reached out automatically to Castiel, recoil a little. The angel stared at him, confused.

“Did I do something wrong?”

Dean shook his head and took a long, deep breath, let it out and squeezed his hands together between his knees. “I’ve just had a lot of time to think and I… I think—“ He swallowed, “I think we need to talk.”

Castiel gazed at him intently, as if to say ‘I thought that’s what we were doing.’

Dean looked at him, and had to look away again. He rubbed his hands together, they felt sweaty, “What do you want, Cas? When you’re here, when you’re with me and Sam, what do you want?”

“I want to keep you safe. I believe what heaven is doing is wrong and what you a your brother are trying to do is right.”

Dean nodded, “And when you’re with me, what do you want?”

“I want to keep you safe—“

“When we’re alone.”

Castiel’s lips compressed, “We’re alone right now—other than the owl in the tree over there.”

“And what do you want, right now. More than anything?”

His eyes seemed to flare briefly, like the futile strike of a wet match, there and gone. “I want to touch you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve seemed to find comfort in it in the past.”

Dean nodded, “What do you want?”

“I told you—“

“What do you want for you?”

“When we’re alone?”

Dean’s throat clicked when he swallowed; “Yeah.”

“To touch you—“

“Why?”

“I told you—“

Dean looked away with an abrupt shake of his head. “I can’t do this… I—“ He turned back and there was hurt in his eyes, “Cas, you can’t do things just because you think I want them… I want YOU, OK? I want Castiel, who told heaven to stick it in their ass, not some empty shell that does what I say blindly and without care, alright? You—You have to find things that YOU want for YOU. Find those things and do them, and if you like them, do them again.”

“Why?”

“Because you can’t keep letting me force you to do stuff like this. If you do that, I’m no better than those assholes upstairs!”

“You’re not forcing me—“

Dean scrubbed his fingers through his hair and muttered a curse. “While you’re looking for God, Cas, try looking for yourself too, OK? Go eat things, drink things—hell, get drunk! Go—go get something pierced or do something crazy! Live a little! You can’t begin to know what you’re trying to protect unless you’ve experienced it. Life can be awesome—it sucks most of the time, but sometimes…” He swallowed, “Sometimes something good’ll happen and you’ve gotta grab it and swallow it before someone has the chance to take it from you.”

“Like the waffles?”

Dean rubbed his brow tiredly, “Sure, why not. Go eat a couple Wafflehouses. Try every goddamned thing on the menu! But do it because YOU want to, not because I want you to.”

Castiel tightened his brow and inspected his knuckles. He was silent for almost a full five minutes, just the quiet thrum of grace between them. When he speaks, it’s not what Dean expected, but perhaps it’s a step in the right direction.

“I don’t like being by myself.”

Dean blinked and cocked an eyebrow at him.

“It’s too quiet… I-I’m having trouble hearing the thoughts of those around me even when I try, and what little remained of my angelic sight is gone,” He swiped his lips with the tip of his tongue. “I’m falling and I don’t know what will be left of me when that happens. The—the fear alone is… I feel suffocated by it. But, when you’re there… I don’t feel it. The weight is gone.”

Dean’s mouth was dry, he breathed in and out, felt heat in his face and ears. “Then call, we—we can talk, or just sit and recharge like this,” He looked down at his hands. “But you need to be you. I can’t be responsible for turning you into a dream,” His throat was tight, too tight, the words didn’t want to come through but he forced them anyway. “I can’t make decisions for you. You need to be able to choose for yourself.”

“It’s difficult.”

“Yeah,” Dean scoffed, “Hell, I don’t even make my own decisions sometimes…” He motioned to himself, “You know the last time I did something just because I wanted to?”

Castiel blinked but said nothing.

Dean jabbed himself in the chest with his thumb; “I can’t even remember the last time I did something for me. It’s always because Sam needed me to, or Dad needed me to, or some schmuck needed me to… I feel guilty spending fifteen bucks to get my goddamned hair cut!”

Castiel’s eyes flicked to his hair and back to his face.

Dean inhaled and pushed it out slow; “The point is, Cas. Make a choice for you, because you want it. Don’t let me screw you up like I am.”

Castiel’s face pinched into something like a scowl and without warning his hands came up and scrubbed roughly through Dean’s hair. Causing most of it to stand on end.

Dean, shocked, grabbed his elbows and ducked away with a muttered curse. “What was that for!”

“It feels different.”

“Cut hair does—“

“No. You feel different. Open. You’re not hiding anymore.”

Dean stared at him, tried to press his hair back down and felt something untwist in his chest. Felt how tightly his grace was clinging to Castiel, and how open that connection between them was.

_**You’re not hiding anymore.** _

He inhaled deeply and turned his face skyward. “I guess not.”

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	45. Picking up the Pieces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised this last night after the finale, but I passed out after my friend left and forgot. I beg your forgiveness!

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

“And then it turned into Hugh Jackman and I kicked it in the balls!” Jo’s left eye was swollen completely shut and that whole side of her face was black and purple. There was a cut in her eyebrow, scabbed and held closed with what looked like strips of duct tape.

Bobby was missing a tooth and the corner of his lower lip had split where it had cut through. He looked exhausted, still shaky as he sipped his whiskey and Maxwell House out of a coffee mug. 

Ellen dabbed at Jo’s face with a washcloth filled with crushed ice. She’d taken a hammer to the cubes herself while Jo related the details of the case. Dean thought it was more out of frustration and threat to Bobby should he ever let something like this happen to her daughter again, than any sort of necessity. There was a bag of frozen peas right there.

“It was awesome!” Jo grinned broadly. 

Bobby snorted, or maybe choked into his cup and avoided Ellen’s eyes.

Angry ghost, he’d said. Possessed car, he’d said. Pagan deities? Nobody had even considered it. 

Sam seemed kind of upset that he hadn’t been the one to go, Dean felt strange sympathy for the fake Hugh Jackman’s balls. 

Ellen let out a breath that might as well have been a snarl and lifted the ice pack from Jo’s face. “You’re lucky you didn’t get yourselves killed.”

Bobby muttered into his booze; “She’s lucky I got loose in time to stab that damned thing.” 

Jo rolled her eyes. “We’re all lucky I don’t have as big a crush on Hugh Jackman as Mom does.” 

Ellen swatted her on the back of the head. 

Dean was restless, he had been for a week and a half—longer truthfully—but it had reached the point that it was all he could think about. His BONES itched to get out and DO something. All this sitting around waiting for something to happen, or waiting for the angels to hack into his brain again was torture. And Dean knew torture, he shuddered in the heat of the room and pushed back from the table. 

Ellen gave him a narrowed glare and he paused, picked up his still half full plate and headed toward the sink with it—

“Boy, what do you think you’re doing?”

Dean froze, “Well, I was going to go out, but now I’m not so sure.”

“You sit down and eat that.”

“I’m not really—“

“Dean,” She said it so innocently, but it burned up Dean’s spine and with a sigh he leaned his hips against the sink and mechanically forked eggs and gravy and hashbrown into his mouth. “Happy?” He said around a mouthful and put his plate in the sink. He choked it down and went for the door but Ellen stopped him, pated his arm and looked at him—Looked AT HIM. 

Dean felt the buzz of her thoughts and emotions like static cling. Apology, worry, hopefulness. 

“I’m just worried about you, kid.”

He sighed and gave the hem of her shirt a little tug, then left without a word. 

Finding a job or a case within driving distance of Sioux Falls was damned near impossible. It was summer and things had picked up, yes. But South Dakota wasn’t exactly known for its hauntings, or monsters. There were a few, every state had a few, but driving out to work on them meant he would have to tell at least Bobby what he was doing and Dean—Dean wanted a little fucking privacy thank you very much. He didn’t want everyone lecturing him that he needed to be careful, or have a partner close incase he had a seizure. He didn’t want someone nagging him to eat or remember his pills. The food thing was the worst because , if nobody paid attention to him, if nobody brought up the topic or made him aware that he was chewing and swallowing, he could do it. Hell, sometimes he could even enjoy what he was eating… But the moment someone mentioned it, or LOOKED at him, or god forbid praised him for eating, his stomach cramped up and his mouth flooded with saliva and he wanted nothing more than to escape to the nearest bathroom and empty his stomach. 

He fought it—did he ever fight it—but it was slow going. 

He’d woken early, he’d gotten used to waking up early to take Sam to therapy, but Monday-Wednesday-Friday he kind of felt at a loss, nothing to really DO. So, that morning, he’d woken up and shuffled into the bathroom and noticed the bathroom scale. He didn’t even know Bobby had a bathroom scale. Maybe Ellen had bought it? Maybe Bobby really was taking his cholesterol thing seriously?

Dean nudged it out from behind the toilet with his foot and stared at it, then—why not?—had stepped onto it , staring down between his feet with his brows furled. He’d frowned. 

The last time he’d been at the hospital they’d weighed him. He hadn’t been able to look. He’d never really been LEAN, not in the way Sam was, just bone and sinewy muscle. Dean could admit he liked his cheeseburgers and his beer, but the softness of his waist had never slowed him down—But now there wasn’t much softness of his waist. Now he could feel his hipbones until recently he’d been able to see the stack of his ribs and the knobs of his spine, so it was a little surprising, standing there staring at the dial on the scale—to see it had ticked upward a little. It—it was nice. Maybe he was beating this thing. 

He’d hiked up his shirt and stared at his abdomen and thought, maybe the skin looked fuller—he looked fuller, healthier than the pile of bones he’d become when he was so sick. 

He’d dressed, satisfied when his clothes seemed to fit a little better, even if they fit the same as they had yesterday, and he’d gone outside. It was a cool morning, it had rained a little the night before, but the ground was so thirsty there was no evidence of it left. A few ducks flew over head in the direction of Bobby’s tiny, reed infesd pond. Sputnik nosed her way out after him and padded off to do her doggy business elsewhere and Dean dropped to sit in the dirt by the little herb and tomato garden. He pinched off dead leaves and pulled up weeds, flicked beetles off the poppies and when Sputnik found him he pinched off one of the chamomile flowers and tucked it behind her ear with a smirk. She sat, ever patient and put her head on his knee. Dean grinned to himself and sneaked one of the tomatoes off the vine—red and warm from the sun. 

He’d sat there amid the junkers and towering plants that hummed through him with energy—and emptied crinkled packets of salt from his pockets onto pieces of tomato he carved away with his pocket knife. 

He hadn’t told Ellen or Bobby about his early breakfast, wanted to keep it for himself. 

Besides, it was a damned good tomato. Maybe he could make marinara with a few of them. He’d always wanted to try that.

Dean stopped on the porch and squinted out at the yard, then checked his phone. No messages. No calls. He sighed and went to the car. Sputnik jumped in beside him and waited until he’d lowered the window so she could stick her face into the wind as they drove. 

The daily papers had nothing. Nobody was talking about anything weird happening out in the world besides the usual. Dean had just about had enough of it. 

Ellen was on the phone when Dean came back in, she was practically shouting, “And what? You don’t think a woman can be a deputy director? I should file a sexual harassment suit against your precinct! Is this how you treat your female officers? I’m not the least bit surprised. You know I could have your job in a second—”

Jo was sitting backward in a chair watching her mother and carving an apple into slivers with a grin on her bruised face. Dean met her gaze and made a motion at his brow as if he were pulling on the bill of a trucker cap and Jo tilted her chin up in understanding, pointed outside the way Dean had come, then curled her hands at her hips and pushed them toward the floor as if rolling herself along.

Dean nodded and eased the door shut behind him as he left. 

Bobby was in the garage, had Sam’s Prius in one of the bays and was practically inverted under the steering wheel messing with cables, Sam was parked not far away with a map like schematic spread over his lap staring at it as if it had been written in Russian. 

“Yeah,” Sam said uncertainly, “You connect lead A with the… connector rod attached to—attached to the gas pedal… No… Yeah, the gas pedal.” 

Bobby muttered and wiggled around a little more, ass in the air, cap sticking out of his back pocket. “There is no damned connector rod!”

Sam scoured the array of parts spread out around them—“Oh, uh—He turned the schematic over and over again, “Lead A goes to the shift toggle and the toggle attaches to the connector rod, THEN the connector rod attaches to the gas pedal.” 

Bobby turned his head and stared at Sam in exasperated.

Sam rubbed his face and looked up to find Dean approaching. 

Dean snorted; “You OK, Bobby?”

“Does it look like I’m OK?” He extricated himself from under the steering wheel and shoved to his feet, rubbing the numbness from his knees. 

“You need some help?”

“Can you make sense of that bullshit?” He waved hatefully at the paper Sam was holding. 

Dean took it and scanned it, rubbed his eye and looked again. He looked down at the parts strewn across the floor, back to the drawing and sat his jaw; “You’re gonna have to take the pedals out and attach these connector rods—“

Bobby threw up his hands. “That’s what I’ve been saying all along!”

Sam scowled; “But the instructions—LOOK!” He pointed to the images. “It says it can be disengaged and driven normally, so why the hell would the pedals have to come out?”

Dean stared, blinked and motioned to the car; “Do you want me to do it?”

“No, I don’t want you to do it!” Sam snarled. “It’s not like I’ve been wanting this done for a month!”

Dean frowned; “You haven’t been cleared by the doc to drive yet—“

“Like that’s ever stopped us before?” He snorted; “Dean, I’ve seen you driving with one hand and holding pressure on a bullet wound with the other.” 

“That’s different—“

“No, it’s not—“

“Sam, you’re in a wheelchair, that’s a pretty big difference than a bullet to the leg. I mean, can you even still handle it?” 

Sam’s eyes narrowed; “Yeah, thanks, I’d forgot I was paralyzed. Thank you for reminding me.” 

Dean rolled his eyes; “Come on, Sammy. I didn’t mean it like that—“

“No, no. I get it. Really—”

“Sam—“

“I’m in a wheelchair so how much help can I be? I can’t follow you around like a damned dog anymore, so what the hell use am I?”

“That’s not what I meant—“

“Then what did you mean?”

“I meant—I meant that it’s harder—Look, I don’t mind driving you where you need to go. It’s nice—“

“Oh, it’s nice?” 

“Sam—“

“I’m helpless, and it’s nice? You get some kind of power kick out of it, Dean?”

“Boys—“ Bobby tilted his chin down in warning, “That’s enough.”

Dean’s face contorted; “Oh, like you didn’t get a power kick out of me being down? Okay, well at least I’m just driving you around instead of—“

Bobby slammed his thick hands down on the roof of the Prius and the resultant crash echoed through the garage; “NOW, I SAID THAT’S ENOUGH!”

Dean and Sam stopped and stared at Bobby with wide eyes. 

“You think it’s been hard for you two this past year? Jesus! I’ve had to live with the both of you! I’ve had to tiptoe around you boys for so long I’m afraid to wear shoes in my own goddamned house! Get over yourselves and learn to take help! It’s not gonna turn your peckers inside out to take a little help when you need it!”

Dean looked visibly disturbed and cupped a hand protectively in front of his genitals. 

Bobby stomped away with a shake of his head. 

Sam took a deep breath and let it out, rubbed his face and pulled at the oxygen cannula under his nose. He said nothing at first, but when he looked up at Dean there was a sliver of shame in his gaze. 

Dean huffed out a breath and plopped down on an overturned bucket an arm’s length from Sam. He watched his brother for a moment, watched how he breathed, watched how his fingers tapped out a nervous rhythm on the arms of his chair. Dean wetted his lips and spoke with more surety than he felt; “I can’t stay here anymore.”

Sam stared at him, shocked. “Dean, you don’t have to run awa—“

“Just—just hear me out… I’m driving you nuts—Hell, I’m driving me nuts,” He rubbed his hands together and peered at the connector rods between his feet; “I want to help you… But I’m just stressing you out.” 

Sam swallowed. “You’re not stressing me out.”

Dean snorted; “Oh really?”

Sam looked away, fiddled with a fray on the inner seam of his pants.

Dean spoke carefully, “I need out of here. I need to DO something, and right now what I WANT to do is fix you,” The words felt stilted and uncomfortable and he had to work them around in his mouth with his tongue before they lost their sharp edges; “But I can’t. You need to do this for yourself, not because I want you to... So—so I need to get out for a while. I need to leave you alone—“ Sam tensed, “—and stop trying to fix you, because I’m just gonna drive you crazy.” 

Sam worked his tongue at the backs of his teeth, “What do you mean?”

Dean breathed in and out; “I don’t know… I’m—I just. I need to get out and DO something before I convince myself I can’t anymore. I have to prove to myself that I can still do this, yanno?” 

“So, you’re gonna leave me here? Dean, I can help! I can… Don’t just leave me here, man—”

“I’m not leaving you… I’m—I need to do this… I need to do this for ME, OK?”

Sam blinked at him. “For you?”

Dean butted himself in the chest with his knuckles; “I’m not good, Sammy. I’m getting better, but I’m not there yet. I need to fix me.” 

Sam’s head tilted, slowly in dawning realization.

“I can’t ask you to trust me to help you when I can’t even help myself, and you can’t ask that of me either.”

Sam wetted his lips; “So, you want to go off alone?”

“Just for a couple weeks… Just until we can cool off so we’re not at one another’s throats like this.”

Slowly Sam nodded. 

He exhaled weightily and reached out to grip Sam’s arm earnestly; “I’m not leaving you, you gotta know that—“

Sam nodded again; “Okay… I—” He rubbed his palms on his knees, tightened his jaw and did it again, almost sadly; “Just, uh—Just be careful.”

Dean patted his arm, gripped it for a moment longer and hesitated, as if ready to speak. But then the moment passed and with a sigh he stood, called to Sputnik and went inside to pack his things. 

Sam watched him go, awed and perhaps a little confused. That hard burr of fear in his stomach was gone. Dean wasn’t abandoning him, wasn’t going to give him up for a lost cause as Sam had been so ready to do to him not long ago. 

In fact, the reality of Dean’s decision was quite the opposite and Sam didn’t know what to make of it.

0-0-0

Something wasn’t right. There was an unnatural sensation in Castiel’s core, an urgency and sense of loss. He couldn’t name it, not quite, he had an extensive vocabulary and it took a while to comb through all the words until he found one that fit exactly. But standing there, perfectly visible, because there was a crowd and nobody really noticed him anyway, Castiel couldn’t help but feel a pang of unsettled discomfort when he saw the paint.

There was a car show in Wisconsin. Castiel had felt three flicks of heat from the pendant hanging around his neck since he’d followed one here earlier, but he couldn’t make himself leave. 

There had to be meaning in this. 

The elderly man had a 1965 Impala but it looked—WRONG. The back end of it looked almost like a station wagon with rocket ship like fins. It was black, but there were red lines on it, and the headliner had little tufted tassels hanging down. Castiel didn’t like it. It felt wrong. 

Even worse, however, was the one beside it. Bright blue with purple flames up the sides. 

Castiel could feel the indignation from Dean’s soul even though the hunter was nowhere near him and could not, in truth, see what Castiel currently was. 

Castiel stood there staring back and forth between the two cars and felt that something was missing from them. 

One of the tattooed, coifed women in tall shoes and a bubblegum pink dress tilted her chin in Castiel’s direction and popped her gum behind her too red lips; “Like what you see?”

No. 

No, he didn’t.

The pendant around his neck gave another microscopic twitch and when the woman turned her head to giggle at the other women with her, Castiel left. Stepped backward through space and time and forward again, in a cosmic twostep. 

Tibet. It was dark. A goat herder was climbing down from the rocks with a kid draped around his neck. It bleated tiredly and when he sat it down the infant goat wobbled off to its mother to drink. 

The herder lifted his head in Castiel’s direction and blinked in surprise, but Castiel was gone. 

London, busy street, dark. Two drunks are staggering home singing loudly with their arms draped over one another’s shoulders. They stop, take another drink and find one another’s lips. Kiss deeply and press shoulders into a brick wall. They smile, secret and dark in the lamplight, rock their hips together. 

Castiel’s chest tightens and he steps back, holds… Hides hovering and feeling the world spin. The scar in his core aches—his HEART aches and he doesn’t understand why. He doesn’t know if he wants to understand. He knows he’s falling, knows it as surely as he knows the exact arrangement of molecules that make up the walls of every cell in a flower, or amoeba, or in the tiny variations in color between the spots on Dean’s freckled nose. 

He wonders if this is what being poisoned feels like, but at the same time his mind whirs because ‘poisoned’ isn’t the right word. It doesn’t carry the need or urgency that he feels. It doesn’t carry the warmth… But the words elude him. Hundreds file past his consciousness in a never-ending column. Word after word, meaning after meaning, and none of them fit. 

Castiel feels hollow and – and LONELY. He rocks forward and finds himself back in the United States. Maryland, on the border with Pennsylvania. Apparently the scent of waffles carries over into the spiritual plain. 

Dean had told him to do something he enjoyed. To ‘Find himself’. Well, Castiel didn’t know WHO ‘himself’ was. Didn’t know really how to start looking. Making choices for oneself was difficult beyond measure. How did humans do it? How did they flaunt such a power so effortlessly?

How did they know what they wanted?

It’s dinner time, according to the clock on the wall. The waiter is young. He’s a college student, broad and tall but soft spoken, he’s been trying to find a way to bring up his boyfriend to his parents. They want to rent an apartment together next semester. The young man asks if he can get Castiel anything to drink while he looks at the menu.

“Water,” His vessel is becoming dehydrated. 

“Just water?”

“Just water,” Castiel peers around the restaurant, doesn’t see a breakfast bar, but there is a young couple in the corner with their toddler child. They’re having pancakes and eggs. 

The waiter, Castiel realizes his name is Justin and wonders why it took him so long to know this, brings over a tall glass of water with ice in it and a straw. 

Castiel scans the menu, has it memorized in just a moment, but looks at it for five more minutes. There are too many choices. Too many variables. Why can’t this be easy?

Justin comes back with his note pad, says; “You ready?” with a smile, but Castiel is not. He’s not ready. His mouth opens and closes—his vessel’s stomach snarls and he wonders how humanity has survived this long when their bodies are so rude.

Justin chuckles, “Bill makes excellent French Toast... ‘course he makes good everything in my opinion.”

Castiel hums contemplatively. 

“But you can’t go wrong with the bacon cheese burger.”

Castiel hefts a sigh and glances out the window as if trying to find inspiration amid the shrubs and cracked asphalt. 

“Need a few more minutes?”

Castiel looked down at the menu and nodded. 

The family in the corner paid and left, a group of men in trucker caps and mud stained boots came in and took a booth in the corner. They all ordered coffee. The oldest chose the roast beef, mashed potatoes and green beans, the younger two ordered ‘Specials’. Castiel glanced around and found a hand written sign on the wall stating that ‘Today’s Special is; Fried Chicken, Corn, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy… 10.00!’

Castiel’s brows scrunched and he pulled out his wallet, counted the numbers on the bills inside and came to sixty-nine. He scoured the menu again and when Justin came over a third time Castiel pointed to an item and nodded. 

Justin smiled, pleased; “You’ll love it! I promise.”

Twenty minutes later Castiel’s stomach had gone past snarling and into a hard twinge of emptiness. He swallowed more water trying to choke it, but the cold seemed to make it worse. He wondered if this was what Dean felt like, not eating. Did his stomach feel like this all the time? How did he stand it?

The men in trucker caps received their meals first, but Justin was grinning broadly when he settled Castiel’s plate in front of him. “Be sure to save room for dessert.”

Bobby had made these before, thick slices of bacon with lettuce and tomato, smeared with Miracle Whip. Castiel had asked what kind of blasphemy Miracle Whip was, as it was by no means miraculous, nor was it ‘whipped’ it had been mixed in a vat in a factory. Bobby had told him to shut up and eat his damned sandwich. It wasn’t waffles. Not by any means. The tomato made the bread a little soggy, and some of the lettuce was wilted, but it filled that hollow in Castiel’s middle and he licked the bacon grease from his fingertips.

When Castiel asked about pie Justin sighed and said all he had left was ghramcracker, that the ‘loggers’ had taken the last of the apple and cherry. 

Castiel ate the pie and couldn’t help but remember Dean’s grinning face across the booth from him, weeks ago. Just smiling and easy. Slice after slice, smile after smile… 

The room felt empty without Dean there. Too much empty air. Castiel missed that fullness in his core from the bare presence of Dean. He missed the connection of his grace and Dean’s. The warmth and familiarity. 

The pie didn’t taste as good as it had before, even though it tasted the same. He marvled at it, how something as simple as company and conversation could make food taste different. 

Taste, there was something. He licked the filling off the tines of his fork and stared down at the divots his consumption had left. Such a strange thing, taste. Before Dean had convinced him to ‘dial down’ his grace he hadn’t been able to taste much of anything, not like this. His vessel tasted it, but he himself hadn’t. He had been only aware of the breakdown of sugars by the enzymes in this body. The breaking of bonds between glucose molecules. The functions of the cells taking in the nutrients and processing the waste. He hadn’t known where to direct that information to make the most use of it.

He much preferred taste. 

Things had so many different flavors and textures. The buttery, crumbly texture of the crust, the smoothness of the filling. The sweetness and tang—Castiel fully believed that if it were possible for him to sit there all day and do nothing but eat pie or waffles he would. But his grace wasn’t functioning high enough for him to burn through the bulk of it and it all just accumulated in his vessel’s stomach. He sighed and stared at the last bite of the pie, impaled on the end of his fork; “You would think, after so many thousands of years of advancements in medicine, humanity would have found a cure for indigestion.” 

The waiter chuckled, appearing as if from nowhere and collected Castiel’s empty plates; “They have, it’s called Pepto.”

Castiel put the last of the pie in his mouth, chewed and swallowed quickly. He asked for a piece to go, “For later,” then asked if twenty dollars was an appropriate tip. Justin’s jaw dropped open and he made a hollow disbelieving sound in his throat, hands shaking when he took the money. “And just tell your parents. They already love Mitchel and they’ll help you find a higher quality home than the one you’re looking at.”

The young man’s eyes widened in shock, his mouth dropped open, flapped fish like and his cheeks became both pale and flushed with color in the same moment.

Castiel set out almost as soon as he’d stepped foot out of the building into the cool evening air. He rocked his feet—back and forth between layers of reality—and found himself standing invisible in the yard of Singer salvage. 

The Impala was gone, and from the look of things—and the sound of voices from inside, Dean had been gone for days now. Castiel stood there, curious and disappointed and stared at the little Styrofoam box in his hands, felt the weight of the dessert inside, and that strange longing and disappointment from before. 

He stepped backward and away again, scanned and felt dimmed indistinct souls, but no Dean. He focused himself, stopped and stood beside the highway because it was dangerous to focus on souls while not tethered to the world, especially when he couldn’t really see where he was going. 

He found Sputnik, knew that Dean wouldn’t be far behind, and watched from afar as Dean drove. Windows down, music loud, Sputnik standing in the passenger seat with her head out the window, tongue flapping in the breeze. Dean wouldn’t be too happy about the drops of dog spit sprayed down the length of his car, but he would wash it away and crank the window down for Sputnik again tomorrow. 

He’d discarded his usual flannel and small damp patches of sweat marked the front and back collar of his shirt. One hand on the wheel, the other pounding out a drum solo on the air around him—Castiel hadn’t seen him like this before. Hadn’t felt the warmth of his soul burning so wide or bright. 

There was mud on Dean’s boots and grass stains on his knees, the smell of lighter fluid and scorched bones cling lightly to his clothes. Two hundred miles east a town was safer, free from the clutches of a vengeful spirit who had claimed three lives in the past week. 

Sputnik had a black bow with guitars on it stuck to the fur behind her left ear. Dean had picked it out himself, though he wouldn’t admit it if Castiel were to ask. 

He pulled into a gas station and filled up the tank, came out with a box of deli chicken nuggets and Slim-Jims and a large bottle of water. He parked in the grass and chuckled while the dog ate and lapped up the water he shared with her.

Dean—Dean looked almost happy. Something was tight in his chest though, Castiel couldn’t tell what it was from a distance, but he could feel it as keenly as he felt his own. 

A flicker from the pendant around Castiel’s neck drew him away, halfway around the world. Uganda. A woman was giving birth to her fourth child, none before had survived—this one too is limp and purple after the woman’s mother swipes a finger in the infant’s mouth and rubs at the still chest— Something happens, at first Castiel isn’t sure what it is. Initially thought it was the reaper—Reapers attend births as frequently as they do deaths—but without his angelic sight Castiel saw nothing, but he FELT something. He felt something with his heart. The silence of the room, the hope and dread in the women’s faces the muttered chanting of prayers. And something burst into being, the infant twitched—inhaled and LIVED. The women in the room cried out joyously and Castiel stood there, watching, confused. He felt the reaper—an old one by the potency of their energy— leave with no hesitation, a flip of their inverted wings and they were gone. 

Castiel could hear the joyful thoughts and pride in the new mother’s soul. Waited until the babe had been severed and was nursing at his mother’s chest. Castiel could FEEL the wide loving burn of the mother’s soul enveloping that of her child and something in Castiel clicked. Something that filled his belly with longing and sadness and hope. He may not be in heaven’s favor any longer, but he breathed a blessing over the family anyway and retreated. 

He finds Dean in Oklahoma sprawled in his underwear on a motel bed with Sputnik butted against his ribcage, air conditioner cranked up on high, with valerian root in his veins and a half empty box of Chinese takeout by his elbow. His brow flexed when Castiel entered the room—felt the tingle of warding on the walls—and put the pie in the fridge.

Castiel pulled the horned goddess from under his shirt and stared at it, felt denial bubbling in his middle. It hadn’t burned hot as it had in Illinois. The twitches and hums he had been following, now that he thinks about it, might not have been temperature changes at all, but instead tremors. The alloy of the pendant picking up not only on God’s presence, but on the reverberation of His Work. Work set into motion millions of years ago. Small miracles spurred into being by humanity’s faith and the power of their souls. 

Castiel breathed in deeply and let it out, human souls were made by God, made of something SPECIAL, something no other creature in the universe had… It stood to reason that this uniqueness would still—even after millennia, bear God’s signature. 

Castiel rubbed his brow tiredly. Tired, he was tired. And lonely. But worse than any of that was the fact that now, after so long looking, after so far he’d traveled… he doubted. 

Dean stretched and grunted in his sleep but didn’t wake, pouted and smacked his lips. 

Castiel turned and watched him settle, felt a tug of emotion at his core. He could remember the heated brand of Dean’s face pressed against his shoulder, the bands of his arms wrapped around his chest, the thick solid living presence of him held so close—that inexplicable FEELING in the back of the Impala months ago now, the night Dean remembered what Zechariah had tried to steal from him. 

That… Whatever it had been, THAT was what Castiel wanted. He couldn’t name it, couldn’t describe it, but he wanted it with every fiber of his being. He CRAVED it so badly he shook within his vessel in want of it. 

Dean had asked him what he wanted and Castiel had said he didn’t know, but he did. He wanted THAT. Wanted to FEEL that againforeverALWAYS because he’d never felt anything like it before and it hurt and it felt wonderful and he didn’t know he’d wanted it so badly until he’d had a taste of it. 

Dean stirried in his sleep again, shifted his feet restlessly and made a noise like air being let out of a balloon. Shards of his dream scattered out like confetti and Castiel found himself awash in it. 

It was nonsense really. Dean was standing in front of a classroom full of faceless young people and behind them the room was filling with demons. But, try as Dean might he couldn’t recite the exorcism, his voice was gone, stolen from him, and one by one the young people started laughing at him and pointing and calling him pathetic and childish and broken… Dean’s grace built and flared in reaction to his distress and the dream changed. It left him standing in a room that had no edges, staring at a window that looked out onto the world in a way that defied physics. There was no way a window could just hover there in an empty space and look out onto the world from every angle. Perhaps he was dreaming of a portal. Portals could do that, but not windows. Maybe it was metaphorical, but—OH!

Dean’s hips rolled and Castiel felt heat bloom in his chest—He practically launched himself backward, wings beating too fast—too soon and scattering papers in the room. Sputnik lifted her head and blinked about stupidly but Castiel was already gone. 

He found himself in New England, staggering to a stop on a mountaintop staring out over the forests toward Canada. His vessel tingled in memory of dreams such as that. Desperation and flesh entangled. The intensity of it frightened him—more so because even if he enjoyed it Jimmy Novak’s soul, where it was mostly dormant protected between his sixth hands, WRITHED in negation. 

Castiel focused on breathing, on soothing the man’s soul he protected and when he was still once more, the angel—falling angel—peered out at the world and wondered where he belonged within it—or if he was foreign and would soon be expelled as the invader he was. 

0-0-0

Dean woke to a soft bark from Sputnik, found his research and news clippings aflutter in the air. He had a knife in his hand before he even knew what was happening, grace pushed into the keenness of the blade, eyes flicking back and forth in the gloom. He could sense energy in the air, but it didn’t set off any alarms, didn’t FEEL foreign. Dean pushed himself to his feet and tiptoed around the room, peered out the windows and double-triple checked the warding he’d scrawled on the walls with a white crayon so they blended in with the paint. He rubbed sleep grit from his eye and yawned. Knew in his heart that it had to have been Castiel— as creepy as the idea was, and he dialed sleepily;

Castiel answered on the second ring with a low, “Dean?”

Dean muttered as he gazed around the room; “Were you watching me sleep?”

“I… You seemed peaceful, so I didn’t wake you… But that seems pointless as you’re awake now.” 

“Next time, wake me… Don’t go all Twilight on me.”

“What?”

“Nothing. So, what did you need? You running low already?”

“No… I was curious. You weren’t at Bobby Singer’s… so, I followed Sputnik.”

Dean snorted, “How do we fix that? If you can follow her, They might too.” 

“They won’t lower themselves to following animals. Not when they can manipulate humans to do the work for them.”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” He rubbed a hand over his face, “Yeah, I lit out of Bobby’s about a week ago. Just finished a salt-and-burn in Tennessee, headed to New Mexico to look up an old pal of Bobby’s, Bill Whitehorse. He helped with the Mukilteo case a while back… Bobby owes him, I’m gonna help him out,” He shuffled to the fridge for a bottle of water and found, shoved against the bottles, a styrofoam box. He flipped the lid open with the blade of his knife, blinked and snorted. “Did you bring me pie?”

After a moment of hesitation Castiel spoke. “Yes?”

Dean snorted, “I’m not gonna say no to a doggie bag, but, you know, next time you could stay and we could get fresh pie,” He picked up the container, squinted at it, just incase. He snagged a fork from the drawer under the microwave and shuffled back to the bed, setting the stale Chinese food on the side table and leaning himself against the headboard. Sputnik waddled up and tried to sniff what he had, but he lifted it out of her range with a scowl, “Not that kind of doggie bag, Sputs… Pie is for people! And none of that sad eyes billshit. I’m immune, remember? If Sammy’s puppy eyes don’t work on me, neither will yours,” He sank his fork into the pointed end of the slice, “So, how’s the God Hunt going?”

Castiel sighed weightily; “It’s a long process,”

“If it’s anything like looking for my dad was, you’re gonna be better off waiting for him to come to you.”

“We don’t have that kind of luxury.”

Dean shifted his body away from the dog. “Well, have you noticed a pattern where you have looked? Maybe if you can anticipate the pattern you can get there before he does.”

Castiel grunted but said nothing. “The only pattern I’ve been able to discern is weak at best.”

“Well, at least it’s something… Look, Sam’s trying to track down something that could help, just incase this God thing doesn’t pan out, OK? I’m… I’m gonna talk with Bill and see if he knows of any trap magic… If we can’t kill the devil, maybe we can trap him.”

“There isn’t much magic known to humanity that can trap an archangel.”

“But there is some?”

“Theoretically, there are spells that can incapacitate anything. But they are likely fatal, or monstrous.” 

Dean hummed and shifted the other direction when Sputnik appeared at his other side, pretending she was another dog and therefore eligible for a bite of his treat. 

Castiel sighed, a sound like all the will had leaked out of him; his voice came to dean from far away, strange and hollow as if he hadn’t even spoken, but put the words into Dean’s head from a distance. “This is pointless… It’s all pointless.”

Dean’s heart clenched, “Cas?”

He didn’t answer.

“Cas, are you OK?”

His voice was low, hard; “Yes, Dean. I’m fine… I have to go.”

“No, wait, hey! What are you talking about pointless?”

Castiel didn’t speak and for a moment but the air on the other end of the line was tense and crackling with energy. 

“Cas!” Dean thought he’d hung up, his throat felt tight and he forced his thoughts toward an image of Castiel—the FEELING of him Dean had grown familiar with. “It’s not pointless. Yeah, it’s difficult, and it sucks most of the time, but it’s not pointless! There are things worth fighting for! There are awesome, wonderful things in this world I haven’t seen yet and I want to. I want people to be able to see them and have them! I want Sam to be able to have them—I want YOU to be able to have them, and if I have to die to save that chance, I will because it’s worth it!” Dean could feel a tension in his core, alien and colored like Castiel’s edges. He felt phantom hands on his cheeks, lips against his own, the smell of his Cas’ cologne and the feel of his skin under Dean’s fingers—His voice cracked, “I’m not gonna sit back and let some big flying rainbow of celestial intent destroy the world. I won’t do it. I’m gonna fight, but you can’t give up on me, buddy. I ne— Sam and me can’t do this alone. We need you.” 

Castiel stood there, still and silent, listened to the fear in Dean’s voice—wished he could wipe that fear away. Wished he could wipe his own fear away. His heart thundered, pulsed as if beating, but Angels don’t have hearts, don’t have heartbeats or stomachs to feel fluttery and throats to feel tight., but Castiel felt these things, not from his vessel, but from inside himself. He breathed and it was as if with a first breath, it ached familiar inside of him and that bubble in his head of stolen memories WRITHED, shapes pressing against its boarders in a desperate bid for freedom. 

Castiel found himself near that boarder again, fingers hesitating—unable to break it, but craving to know what was in there just the same. 

“Cas… Cas, pelase say something.” 

He swallowed, found his own voice shaking; “It’s OK, Dean… I’m here.” 

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	46. The Dark Man; Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED ME GET THROUGH THIS HELLISH MONTH!
> 
> Thank You, to Winjennster, Emmyloo03, Jessi, Holli-Pop and many others whose names I've completely forgotten! *I'M SO SORRY!* 
> 
> *hugs to ALL!*
> 
> NOTE! I broke this chapter into two chapters because once I finished writing it I realized it was 50+ pages, and even for me that's excessive. So, enjoy part 1! Any mistakes are my own as I am exhausted and won't get to proofread it until later.

0-0-0

Bill Whitehorse was in his mid-sixties, and according to Bobby, hunted with a man named Jay Halwood who he claimed was your authority on finding rare or obscure artifacts. Bobby had known Bill for about fifteen years and they had communicated information back and forth but only truly met twice. “He can be a bastard, but he’s good people,” He was also, not at all what Dean expected. 

There were two men standing at the end of the road when Dean pulled up. The shorter of the two was a scruff, greying ginger man in the ubiquitous trucker cap. He was built broad and thick, with a barrel chest and slightly bowed legs and wore a tan fisherman’s vest over a faded Van Halen t-shirt. He had a thin, curling ponytail and a wicked looking knife with a bone handle hanging in a leather scabbard on his right hip. The taller of the two was lean, with high cheekbones and arms crossed over his chest. Dean couldn’t really gage his age, he could have been anywhere from his mid-forties to his mid-sixties. He kept his hair long and it was streaked with silver. He was dressed like almost every hunter Dean had ever seen, jeans, boots, t-shirt and flannel, but there were little things that spoke of his culture. A ring on his right hand, a necklace. Personal things that would likely be over looked by an outsider.

Two men and two vehicles. A dinged up old truck with a bullet hole in the back window, and a ragtop jeep of a rusty red color. Dean stopped and climbed out of the Impala, blinking at the evening sun. He lifted his chin; “You Bill Whitehorse?” 

The shorter man stepped forward and stuck out his hand; “Bill Kingston, ‘Whitehorse’ is a nickname… This is Jay Halwood, he’s your authority around here,” Bill cupped a hand conspiratorially to his lips; “Try not to piss him off, he’s a hardass.” 

Jay nodded to Dean but didn’t speak, just looked him up and down appraisingly. Dean felt strangely naked under his gaze.

Bill said nothing while Jay inspected the younger hunter, and Dean cocked an eyebrow at him questioningly but was ignored, so he gave Jay a cursory glance of his own. “Sizing me up for a coffin?”

Jay chuckled and his lips curled up and he lifted his chin, seemingly satisfied with whatever inspection he’d been conducting. “What were you told about the situation?”

Dean blinked and wrapped Sputnik’s lead around his fist a little tighter; “Not much… Bobby said you’d had some people go missing and it sounded like our kind of thing.” 

Jay scoffed without even making a noise, “Your kind of thing?”

Dean nodded; “Something not exactly natural.”

Bill nudged his friend in the ribs; “Told you he was sharp.”

Dean couldn’t tell if it was sarcasm or not. It was hard to get a read on these men. He wasn’t sure if they were laughing at him inside, or if they were just really paranoid about who they trusted with this matter. Part of him wanted to peek into their minds to find out, but another said that doing so would be a breach of their trust and this really was an isolated portion of the state. Who was to say they wouldn’t just kill him, burn his body and send the Impala into an arroyo somewhere, never to be seen again.

Jay inhaled deeply and looked at the horizon, then at his watch; “We’ve got enough time to get back if we leave now… You can leave your car here, it won’t be bothered.”

Dean looked around dazedly, spied a dinky service station across the road with a single bay and two ancient gas pumps; “Are you kidding?”

“It’s a rough road, if you want to drive that boat in and tear off your exhaust I’m not going to stop you, just thought I’d give you the option,” Jay said evenly. 

Dean sneered.

“Bill owns the station, nobody will bother it if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Hasn’t been open for business in years, only thing you’ll have to worry about is Rusty leaving paw prints on your hood,” Bill twirled the keys on his finger; “Besides, dust storms’ll ruin your paint job and clog up your air filter faster than the shop cat will.”

Dean wrinkled his nose at the mention of a cat, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d found tiny kitty prints on his hood. He was sure there were feral cats living in Bobby’s collection of Buicks. He sighed, turned and gave the Impala a long look. He didn’t like the idea of leaving his car someplace he didn’t know, especially with people he didn’t know. He liked leaving his weapons even less. 

Dean had never been comfortable being at the mercy of a stranger. He muttered discontentedly to Sputnik as he pulled the Impala into the work bay. He rolled up the windows and made sure all the doors were locked, and stared around the work area for signs of the cat. There was a large litter box in the corner, a spluttering air conditioner in the far window and a scattering of mauled cat toys leading into the old office. Sputnik rumbled low in her throat, head lowered, nose pointed toward the office and Dean had the urge to bend down and scratch behind her ears encouragingly. 

He walked one last time around the Impala and collected a duffle bag of various odds and ends from the trunk that may come in useful, as well as Sputnik’s bowl and the bag of special kibble Sam had got for her. She pulled her own towel along, happily prancing with her nose in the air, eyes squinted against the softly blowing dust. 

Jay chuckled down at her good-naturedly and climbed behind the wheel of the jeep.

Bill, apparently, drove the truck, not that Dean was surprised. The doors made a racket when Dean pulled the passenger side open and lifted Sputnik in. It wasn’t a bad truck, just obviously well used, the seats were cracked and worn smooth, the window crank on the passenger side wasn’t the same as the one on the driver’s side. The radio had been pulled out, and there was an empty socket back into the dash where it had been, like a missing tooth. 

Sputnik crawled up onto Dean’s lap and wedged herself between his arms, face into the wind, eyes closed against the blowing grit. Dean had to sympathize, squinted and tried to hold his breath to keep from inhaling it. 

It wasn’t the distance, or the shifting, but monotonous scenery, if anything Dean was more unsettled by the silence than the apparent isolation.

Jay, however, had been right, the road was in disrepair, rutted and sandy, they drove for a good thirty minutes over squat rocky hills and past bristled ancient looking pines. In front of them Jay’s jeep rumbled along with little hesitance over rocks and boulders and through ruts where it was obvious the water gathered into creeks when it rained. 

The Impala wouldn’t have made it a quarter of a mile before having her undersides ripped off by the terrain.

Dean wasn’t used to all the jostling and before long had his face in the wind and a hand braced on the window frame above his head, one arm around Sputnik who was making distressed grunting noises at every bounce. He’d never really been one to get car sick, but well… There was apparently a first time for everything.

“You wanna reassure me you fellas aren’t gonna drive me out into the desert and kill me?”

Bill chuckled and spat out his window; “We ain’t gonna kill you. Not intentionally… Can’t say much about this monster though. It ain’t like anything we’ve dealt with before. I’ve lived on the edge of the Reservation almost my whole life and I have never seen anything like it.”

“You been doing this long?”

“Doing what?”

“Hunting.”

“Oh,” Bill shrugged, “A while, you see, I lost my wife the same year Jay lost his, wasn’t related—My Julie liked to drink and drove herself into a garbage truck… Jay—Jay’s wife had cancer in her lady parts from what I’ve gathered. He don’t talk much about that… We started hunting around the same time—A kid from the Res got possessed and cut up his sister in the parking lot of my garage. Took Jay and me both to hold the boy down and while we was pinned all this black shit came outta him and tried to go down Jay’s throat, but Jay’s not exactly what you would call permissive about lettin’ shit get to him, so he coughed it back out. It kind of resets your philosophy, seeing something like that… Anyways, Jay and me buddied up not long after that. And this? Like I said, it ain’t like anything we’ve seen before.”

“Still in the dark here, Bill.” 

Bill grunted, “We all are.”

0-0-0

They crested a hill just as the sun was sinking behind the mountains and Dean caught sight of a small town. It was mostly a grouping of homes, single-wides and double-wides set at angles to the roads that twisted through. He could see lit windows and a few fenced off areas with animals, chickens, a goat or two, a white and brown horse with its nose in a water trough. What struck him as odd though, was that the whole area was practically deserted. In Dean’s experience, sundown allowed people to venture outside in arid places. But, there was practically nobody outside.

The only people they saw upon entering town were a few teenagers standing around a mailbox, two girls in tank-tops and shorts talking with two boys straddling bicycles. Jay slowed down and spoke to them and they all nodded, seemingly in unison. The two girls turned and went into the singlewide at their back and the boys rode off quickly in opposite directions. 

Dean watched, curious, and Jay started off again, drove to the end of the street and parked at one of the only permanent structures in the whole town. It was a squat brick house that looked like it may have, at one time been some kind of store but had been converted. 

There was a young woman with a drooling baby on her hip standing just inside the door. She was pretty with a wide heart shaped face and dark eyes. She had her hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun and there were tiny beads of sweat along her collarbone. She smiled when Jay and Bill got out of their vehicles and spoke to be heard over the whir of a fan in the window. “Good to see you again Mister Kingston,” She noticed Dean and her head tilted to the side, eyes flicking back to Bill, “You and your friend staying for dinner?”

Jay said something to her in low rumbling tones and her smile faded, eyes flicking back and forth between Jay and Dean; “Oh,” She said, nodded; “Oh, OK.” 

Dean could feel the anxiety rolling off of her. The fear. She disappeared inside and Jay held the door open for them, “Make yourselves at home.”

Dean nodded in acknowledgement and sat his duffle down at the edge of the room, he skirted around the woman and the baby when at all possible. Sputnik, however, seemed enamored with the baby and was wiggling and whining excitedly licking her lips. The baby stared down at her with wide eyes and grinned a drooly, gummy grin. 

“Have a seat,” Jay said motioning to the sofa and love seat against the far wall; “I’ll get my notes,” He went into the other room, what Dean assumed was an office or bedroom. 

The woman sat in a rocking chair against the counter top and held the baby to her chest so he could see the room. She was still young, anywhere from her late teens to early twenties, Dean couldn’t tell, “So,” She said, pressing a kiss to the baby’s head, “You’re a hunter? You look kind of young to be one.” 

Dean scratched his neck, “I’ve been doing it for a while now… Kind of a family thing.”

The woman nodded, “Dad started when I was six I think… He wouldn’t let me help. I came right to him when this all started.”

“When what started?”

Jay came back out with a box about the size of a milk crate. “Sorry about that, this is my daughter Sara, and my grandson Jason… Sara, Jason, this is Dean Winchester,” Jay smiled at the infant and dropped a kiss onto his little head, “He’s come to help find your papa.”

Sara smiled, but it was a troubled expression, she took a deep breath and continued her tale, “My husband, Nez, disappeared two weeks ago… Not a normal disappearance… He went outside to bring in the dog and I was inside with Jason. The door was open and the sun had just gone down, Jason was fussy and didn’t want to sleep and he’d started crying about the time I heard the dog start barking. I looked out the window and saw Nez talking to this strange man in a black coat. I turned around to find Jason’s pacifier and I heard the dog cry out, like it had been kicked—The dog runs in shrieking with his tail between his legs and starts running in circles. There was blood on his face and side, so I thought, maybe he had been bitten by a snake. Jason started screaming because of the dog and I called for Nez but he didn’t come. I went to the door to shout but he was gone—just gone and the dirt where he and the man had been standing was all wrong—like someone had raked over it with something… Cut it up. The dirt’s hard packed, it would have taken a lot, but it was cut up and Nez was gone.”

Dean met her eyes, lowered his voice in a calming way; “Did you see the man’s face?”

“N-no,” Sara paled and took a deep breath, her eyes started watering; “Not really… But two days later, after I’d talked to the police and they’d left, just after the sun went down, the power and phones went out… then the dog started acting funny again, he hid under the bed and was whining and shaking—peed all over the floor and Jason started crying. Really crying. I’ve never heard him make noises like that before… Then the knocking started. Knock on the door, then shake the knob… Knock louder and shake harder. I asked ‘Who is it?’ but there wasn’t an answer,” She swallowed as if nauseated, “S-so I looked out the hole and there was—there was this terrible face. Like a china doll, all smooth and wrong with big—big orange eyes.”

Dean glanced to Bill and Jay curiously, then down at Sputnik and back to Sara. “Orange eyes? Are you sure they weren’t red?”

She shook her head, gaze damning; “Orange. Like juice… Glowing orange.”

Dean motioned for her to continue.

Sara took a deep breath and shifted Jason on her lap; “I screamed and hid in the bedroom with Jason but that man kept knocking, harder and harder until I was sure he was going to break the door in. Then the knocking started at the other door too, then the windows… Just banging so hard the whole house shook—but it wasn’t normal banging, after a while the sound changed—and the smell—It smelled like r-rotting and pond water… And the banging was like footsteps and scratching, something running and running and running around and around the house. Running on the walls! And it didn’t stop until morning… And when the sun came up it got so quiet I thought for sure it had got in— then power came back on and I-I called my dad. I didn’t leave the room until he came and told me there was nothing out there, nothing in the house… But the smell stayed, it wouldn’t go away,” She took a deep breath, “Dad stayed with me that night and nothing happened, the next night—“ She had tears rolling down her cheeks and Jason had turned in her lap and was whimpering into her collar; “The next night he took someone else.”

Jay had a hand on his daughter’s shoulder, “It’s been a pattern… Every fourth night it comes to take someone. Sara was lucky. We discovered that she’d lined the perimeter of the house with salt… The last two families weren’t. I didn’t see the connection until the second family was taken, but once I did I told everyone to make salt lines around their homes. Tonight is the fourth night, if they listened to me, everything should be fine… If they didn’t—“ He left the sentence unfinished and swallowed with some measure of difficulty.

Dean cleared his throat; “What do you think it could be?”

“We don’t know… But we’ve found this,” Jay opens the box and lifts out a collection of green files with names scrawled on them in ink.

Dean took them one by one when they were offered and paged through them. He whistled low in his throat. “’Dark Man’?”

“That’s what the newspapers called him. Showed up about five years ago. Same story… Someone outside after sundown is taken, two nights later it shows up for the rest of the family. If the house isn’t protected, they’re all gone by dawn.”

Dean stared at the paper clippings, and testimonies. All describing the same thing. A man in a black coat followed by forty days of mayhem. Orange eyes in a death mask. “It has some similarities to a Gast, attacking families… But there hasn’t been any unusual bird activity or mutilated animals, and Gasts only attack one at a time over a period of weeks.”

Jay shook his head, “Gasts?”

Dean nodded, “Similar to a Harpy, but nastier. Goes after children first, then adults, one by one.”

Jay nodded, “This doesn’t discriminate, just takes everyone, leaves the place smelling of decay and covered in ash.”

Dean lifted his head; “Ash?”

“We thought it was dust from outside at first, because the windows are broken and the door was open—but when they tried to wash the walls down—it just caked up like cement. It’s ash.”

Dean looked down at the news clippings again; “You said you traced it back to about five years ago?”

“Give or take, why?”

Dean found the date of the earliest documented disappearance and something itched at the back of his mind. He couldn’t remember anything in particular happening on that date. No eclipses, no shooting stars or earthquakes. No spikes in supernatural activity. Just the middle of May. He rubbed his face and looked to Sara; “Do you think you could draw the face you saw? Or something close to it?”

Sara nodded, “I can try.”

“That’d be helpful… I need to call Bobby and get him on this—Why didn’t you tell him what was going on?”

“We thought we could handle it,” Bill said with a shrug, “But the other night Jay did some sort of ritual on the mountain up there, we even put about twenty-four-hundred dollars of silver, and gold bullets into the thing, but it didn’t help.”

Dean rubbed his brow, mouth opening—

And Sputnik’s head snapped up, ears perked, nose twitching. She shifted uneasily on the seat beside Dean and her fur stood on end under her vest. 

Everything stopped, still and breath held— The power flickered, buzzed—and died.

Sara’s breathing became quick and shallow and Jason whimpered in her arms, snuffled and started to cry.

Then it happened. From the distance came a sharp shrill, animalistic cry like nothing Dean had ever heard before. Bill lurched to his feet. “It’s Kia—Jay!”

The horse Dean had seen in a corral down the road was screaming.

Sara’s eyes widened and she wrapped both arms protectively around Jason, body turning away from the windows and doors. Jay muttered comfortingly and helped maneuver her into the back room, Dean could hear a dog whimpering softly, thought it was Sputnik but when he patted her back she was stone still, hackles up, not making a sound.

Dean went for his duffle, shoved a sawed-off into Jay’s hand as he came back into the room and spoke quickly; “Rocksalt and iron filings,” He held out another to Bill, but the older hunter already had his pistol drawn.  
Bill tapped the barrel twice against his chest. “Silver.”

Dean nodded and headed to the back room, found Sara wedged into an interior closet with her son and a dappled white and brown hound in a doggie diaper. Dean shoved Sputnik into the closet with them; “If anything tries to get in shoot it!” And he handed her his pistol. “This is a special gun, OK? It might not kill whatever this thing is, but I can guarantee it’ll hurt it… Aim for the chest and face.”

Sara stared at the gun, agape; “No—No, you take it! You’ll need it!”

“I’ve got another one.”

“I don’t like guns.”

He worked his tongue at the backs of his teeth, “Please.”

With a sigh she tucked her son into a nest of blankets at her hip, took the gun in one hand, and Sputnik’s collar in the other. “Hey,” She said, her voice shaking; “Don’t let this thing get you.”

Jay was already outside scanning the darkness with the flickering beam of his flashlight. He thumped the barrel against his hand and muttered a curse. Dean took it from him, breathed in and pushed out—the light blazed too bright and didn’t dim. “Loose wire,” He said, by way of explanation.

Jay didn’t think twice, took the light in one hand, his gun in the other and sprinted away.

It was dark outside, too dark. None of the streetlamps worked, none of the porch lights burned. Dean wondered what kind of monster could knock out electricity to a whole town. Not a Gast, they didn’t like electricity. Not anything corporeal, or else it would have climbed over the salt in Sara’s house no problem.

Bill scanned each house as he passed it, motioning with a rigid palm down the street as he cleared each residence. Occasionally his flashlight caught pale frightened faces pressed into windows, and two or three houses had crying babies or howling dogs inside. The horse at the end of the road was still screaming and the closer to it they got the faster Jay ran. 

Dean’s heart was beating quick, gun feeling heavy and right in his hands. He didn’t like hunting things in the dark, didn’t like creatures that looked human. He especially didn’t like that growing stink in the air. His stomach rolled and he had to force himself to swallow, had to separate his anxieties from what was happening because lives depended on this. This is what he’d needed, a struggle. A focus. He’d needed to find something evil and destroy it, needed to make himself move past the—

Breaking glass, a shrill scream—

Jay twisted, skidding in the dirt and ran toward a singlewide set back from the road. He vaulted over the fence of the horse corral, ignored the animal bucking frantically in circles, mouth foaming, and shouted something Dean couldn’t understand.

The house was dark inside, but one of the windows was broken inward, the curtains flapping out in the wind. Dean could hear breaking glass and the thudding of running feet before he’d even made it to the fence. Another scream, a child’s scream.

Bill was going around the corral, but Dean just planted one hand on a fence post and heaved himself up and over it, dodged the horse as it made for him with a shriek, eyes rolling and wild.

Jay made it to the porch just as Dean was coming across the yard. He pulled back one leg, knee almost to his chin and with a mighty kick knocked the front door open. The smell—

Sulfur and rotting meat—heat too great to be natural this time of the night—

A woman was screaming, hysterical and shrill and a child was crying. Dean took the steps two at a time and came into the room gun drawn. Everything was dark, but he could see the outlines of a kitchen table and broken crockery scattered across the kitchen. The living room furniture had been upheaved, cracked and broken leaning against the walls like buttresses. A woman and two children were huddled in the corner behind the overturned refrigerator and rock salt was scattered across the floor in front of them in a hasty, wavering line.

Jay was standing in the middle of the room, flashlight a burning star as he held it between his teeth. He motioned Dean forward with a curl of his palm at ear height and Dean made the same motion over his shoulder at Bill.

Bill took up a wide stance in the middle of the kitchen, protecting the woman and her children and made a circle with his finger and thumb, fingers splayed out in a fan above it.

Jay made the same motion back at the other man and Dean peered around him down the hallway, saw the bedroom door broken and barely hanging on its hinges. The air felt thick and dank with the stench of decay and brimstone.

Jay’s flashlight flickered in the edge of Dean’s vision and he motioned with two fingers down the hallway and he and Dean advanced, steps silent, breath still.

Two steps in and the pressure of the air sank into Dean’s throat, pressed against his windpipe, the smell coated the back of his throat— He felt phantom aches in his shoulder, wrist and side—the blunt catastrophic jerk of giant rusty hooks finding his flesh and yanking him upward like a goddamned fish.

Something large and black skittered across the wall in the far bedroom and Dean caught a glint of bright orange and a pale, smooth—GRINNING face.

The grace in his chest erupted, completely without his control and everything around him suddenly burned with vivid color. The trace energy of the inhabitants’ souls on things they loved. Photos and drawings and pieces of intricate artwork smashed and torn on the floor. Clothes and broken pieces of pottery on the ground, shredded blankets and baskets and tiny delicate glass flowers.

And there, stark and empty and BLACK against it was a huge, creeping black THING straight from the deepest reaches of hell.

Pain lanced through his head, a cold hard spike where spine met skull and Dean’s knees buckled. The thing let out a ear piercing shriek and launched itself out the window in a spray of broken glass and shredded curtains.

“Dean? DEAN!” Jay’s hands were big and hard against his shoulders, trying to pry him up.

“I’m OK!” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m OK.” His eyes didn’t want to open. It was too bright, the grace in him was whirring high and tight like a migraine. It prickled his skin with gooseflesh and he could FEEL it glowing there, between his muscles and bones, wondered if his body were lit up like Christmas like his hands had been the night Lucifer was released.

He tried to reel it back in and couldn’t, it wouldn’t listen. He heard a high humming of electricity, panicked shouts and the tinkling shatter of light bulbs.

He couldn’t stop it. Didn’t want this to happen, but he couldn’t stop it. His legs felt like jelly and he forced himself up, could see the outline of the room through his lids, he lurched forward, ignoring Bill and Jay’s cries of his name. He hit the porch railing and toppled over it, landed hard on his back in the dirt and all the air punched out of his chest. He laid there stunned, squirming trying to regain his breath and finally—FINALLY the grace started to abate, sank into his lungs and fought to inflate them instead of burning through his skin.

When he was able to focus again Bill had dragged him over to the porch and leaned him against one of the lower supports. Dean was still wheezing asthmatically and pulling at his shirt, but when he opened his eyes the colors of the world were manageable.

Bill was a pinkish color, like salmon, and Jay was a dark blue with red edges in his worry. “You OK, Kid?” Bill said.

Dean nodded, took a deep breath and coughed, felt it aching through his ribs like he’d been hit by a bus.

“I think I owe Singer an apology,” Bill said slapping Dean’s back in a way that was meant to be helpful but wasn’t; “I didn’t know he’d sent us a psychic.”

Dean blinked at him and wiped at the breathless moisture in his eyes with the back of his arm; “What?”

Jay came back down the steps with a child’s plastic cup filled with water. He handed it to Dean and crouched at his other side; “Are you alright?”

Dean blinked frantically; “I’m fine—What do you mean psychic? I’m not psychic.”

Bill hesitated and glanced around him; “Boy, if you ain’t then you’ve got some serious explainin’ to do.”

Dean forced himself to take a drink of the water—wound up gulping it down and taking a moment to stare at the shake of his hand in the air. “What happened?”

Bill gave Jay a look, one of those significant looks. Dean knew them well because he shared them with Sam or Castiel often enough.

Jay shifted his feet a little and put a hand on Dean’s shoulder; “We found it in the back bedroom… you looked at it and—we could all feel it. I’ve met some powerful psychics in my life, Dean, but I’ve never met one who could use their energy like that… You pushed the thing out of the house, and blew every bulb in the place when you did it.”

Bill’s expression was closed, dark; “Now either you did it, or that thing did.”

Dean swallowed convulsively; “I…” He looked around, noticed a few people had come out of their houses with flashlights and were heading over slowly, warily. He felt his skin crawling, mind overloaded by all the smears of soul color and the very living thrum of the earth beneath him. “I need to lie down.”

Bill pushed himself to his feet and pulled Dean up, left Jay to deal with the people coming over to see what could be done to help.

Dean barely even noticed the walk back to Jay’s house. He only became aware of his proximity to it when he heard Sputnik barking and saw Sara’s worried face in the living room window. She didn’t unlock the door right away, just stood there peering at Bill through the glass with her brows drawn down angrily; “Where’s my father—Bill—WHERE IS MY FATHER!”

Dean could see the fear in her, a brown tinge to her honey and green. Jason’s color was almost completely enveloped by his mother’s their souls burning WHITE between them.

“Jay’s fine! He’s taking care of things… It got two people but Dean here—Dean scared it off. He needs to lie down.”

Dean could feel himself slowly collapsing inward, his skin tingled and his muscles were going uncontrollably lax. It reminded him of the weakness that consumed him after a seizure, and at the same time, the bone deep tiredness after a fever broke. The colors of the world were starting to fade away, taking the light with them and Dean shook his head, worried he may just fall over in the dirt like a fucking damsel.

Sara stared at them long and hard, then with an impatient sigh unlocked the door and ushered them in.

Sputnik went right to Dean, sniffing, whining, and trembling all over. He bent to put his hands into her fur and nearly toppled over, wound up on his hands and knees on the rug focusing on his breathing and trying to dodge Sputnik’s licks to his face. Bill caught him under the arms and dragged him up again, urged him to the couch and pushed him down.

Dean didn’t complain, felt his spine popping and all his muscles uncoiling. His vision tunneled out and his heart thudded; “Cas,” Was that voice his? Thin and reedy, “I… I need Cas.”

Visions of horror and blood played themselves out behind his eyes, snippets and splashes of gore like the pieces of discarded film on the cutting room floor. Light and fire flashed behind his eyes amid screaming and chewing CHEWING ugly teeth. They were just as vivid as they had always been, but they—they felt different. He found himself pulling away from them with more ease than before. Reaching out toward the memory of Castiel’s grace, the feel of a hand on his head, arms around his chest—Watching Castiel reach into his own core and pull out that part of himself to help put Dean back together again, his hands had—

He woke with a hard jolt to a cold wet cloth being placed on the back of his neck. His eyes popped open and his hands dove under his head looking for a weapon. Reflex born anew. What he found instead was a baby rattle and a firm pillow with a dark green cover.

Then his body relaxed again, senses awash in a new sensation—calm, connection— His eyes fell closed, “Cas?”

“Lie still.”

“How the hell did you get here?” Dean tilted his head and squinted, saw Castiel sitting on the edge of the coffee table, he’d discarded his rain coat and jacket and pushed his sleeves up to his elbows—his goddamned tie was on backward, loosened because of the heat, and his brow was prickled with sweat.

He looked beautiful—

Dean pinched his lips tightly together and hid his face back in the pillow; “What happened?”

“Bill Kingston called me last night and said you had ‘blown a fuse’, and that you had asked for me before you fell asleep… I thought—“ He didn’t say what he thought, but the pinch of his brows spoke volumes.

“Cas, were you worried about me?”

Pink flooded Castiel’s stolen face, more than just what had been there because of the heat. “Your first case after so long an abstinence… I was told that you’re lucky Ellen didn’t come out here herself.”

Dean grinned stupidly and let his eyes close once again; “You were worried about me.”

Castiel let out an exaggerated huff.

Dean nuzzled the pillow and shifted his legs against the couch cushions—His pants were missing. He pawed at the back of his thigh, “Where the hell are my pants?”

“I removed them, for your comfort and ease of circulation.”

Dean blinked at him slowly; “You removed them?”

“Yes.”

“Yanno. Usually you buy a guy dinner first.”

Castiel’s eyes narrowed; “You said I didn’t have to give you food—“

Dean sighed and plopped his face back into the pillow, “It’s a joke, Cas… Nevermind,” He rolled carefully onto his back and glanced around to make sure nobody was there to see him in his underwear. “Where is everyone?”

“They’ve gone to help repair the house that was damaged.”

Dean rubbed his face; “Did Bill shoot you when you beamed in?”

“No… I brought a vehicle.”

“You brought a vehicle?” Dean sat up slowly; “You drove?”

“I’m capable… Jimmy Novak was a Driving Instructor at one time. I have access to that information.”

“You drove all the way here in one night?”

Castiel’s expression became somehow sheepish; “I drove from Bill Kingston’s service station… Bobby told me Bill was liable to shoot me if I just appeared or if I walked in, and I don’t know what damage that would cause in my current condition, so he gave me these,” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and Dean’s stomach tightened up. “It’s an interesting vehicle.”

Dean knew those keys. “Uh, yeah… about that—“

“You are aware that you infused grace into the truck.”

Dean rubbed his jaw, “Not on purpose.”

“You put Grace—the most creative and destructive energy in the universe—into a truck,” He looked displeased—not pissed, Dean could have handled pissed. Displeased made his skin crawl.

“I didn’t mean to, it just sort of… happened.”

“You don’t understand how dangerous grace can be in the wrong hands. What that truck could do to a human body, the grace will do to the soul.”

“Can’t you take it out?”

“No, it would have to be destroyed.”

“Destroyed? You mean destroy the truck?”

“Yes.”

Dean felt it like a blow to the chest; “No. You can’t destroy it.”

“If a human being got hold of it, not knowing what it could do—“

“Then we won’t let anybody else get it—“ 

“It needs to be destroyed.”

“Hey! I worked too damned long and too damned hard trying to fix that thing! You’re not destroying it!”

“It is essentially a grace weapon. A weak one, but a grace weapon none-the-less. If a demon, angel or corrupt human were to gain access t—“

Dean flapped his hand tiredly, “If it’s so dangerous, you keep it!”

“Me?” Castiel blinked; “You want me to keep it?”

“If it’s either destroy it or let you have it I’d rather let you have it. End of discussion,” Dean crossed his arms testily; “Where the fuck are my pants?” He pushed himself up and stalked around the room, found his jeans draped over the back of a kitchen chair. He yanked them on and stopped at the sink to gulp down a glass of water. Castiel was still sitting there looking somehow surprised.

Dean sighed weightily and made his way back to the couch, “We’ve got bigger problems,” He sat down in front of him, their knees almost touched; “Last night, I got a look at this thing Bill and Jay are hunting… It—it looked like one of the spider demons, but it doesn’t make sense. It wasn’t possessing anybody… It was just HERE. How is that possible? Could it be something that just LOOKS like a spider demon?”

Castiel was looking at the keys in his hand, didn’t seem to have heard a word Dean said. Dean took the keys and put them aside; “Focus, Cas… Spider demon kidnapping people. I need your input.”

Castiel swallowed with a measure of difficulty, the sweat on his upper lip was beaded and collecting around the short little dark hairs sprouted on his lower face. “Spider demons… I don’t—“

Dean clenched his jaw; “This one had orange eyes, it looked like one of the demons who—who transport souls… They—they chew the souls up, and carry the pieces to the other demons.”

Castiel shook his head; “There’s no way… Those demons don’t leave Hell. They were never human, they were never anything other than what they are now.”

“Cas, I know what I saw. I know what I felt… It was one of those things. The eyes were different, but it was one of those things.”

“I can agree that it’s a demon, but the Crawling Ones were accounted for. There were six when we made our first attack, and there were six when the last wave was withdrawn.”

Dean rubbed his face. “Well, this thing has been here kidnapping people for about five years now, maybe one escaped a long time ago. Any hell breaches about five—“And Dean’s heart skipped a beat. 

Five years ago. Where were Dean and Sam five years ago? 

Dean muttered under his breath, turned and found the box of files Jay had brought out the night before, stuffed under the edge of the coffee table. “Please, don’t be Montana… Please, don’t be Montana—“ He found the first file again and let out a shaky breath. “Crap.”

Castiel cocked his head and tried to see what had been written in the file. Dean shoved it into his arms instead of suffering Castiel’s hovering over his shoulder, and slumped back against the couch dramatically.

Castiel saw the date and the location and turned to Dean with a knowing look on his face; “The Devil’s Gate—“ His brows pulled together in anger; “When you opened the Devil’s Gate you let one of these things out. We only counted six because there were only six present, but there is another one. There’s another one and it’s running amok on earth.”

Dean pushed to his feet, one hand on his hip, the other on the back of his neck, “We just gotta find out where it’s taken these people and exorcise it back to Hell. It’s that simple.” 

Castiel’s face contorted; “It is not ‘that simple’… This is not an ordinary demon. You can’t exorcise it, it has form. You can only exorcise a demon that has no physical form, or has taken a vessel… This is a creature, a living thing, like a hellhound. Once it has been summoned—or released—It’s here until it dies or is called back to Hell by a more powerful demon. And that is not likely to happen, not when it can harvest souls as it pleases, deals or no.” 

Dean felt a lump in his throat; “Well, how do we kill it then?”

Castiel hesitated, inhaled and exhaled.

Dean gaped at him; “You don’t know?”

“They’ve never been outside of Hell before, Dean. Angels don’t make it a habit of going into Hell. We know what was banished down there, we know what exists in the pit, but none of it was meant to escape. None of it was meant to leave.”

Dean rubbed his face tiredly; “You don’t know how to kill it.” 

“Of course I do. A weapon imbued with enough grace will kill it, or a weapon blessed by a saint.”

“A blade blessed by a saint?”

“A Saint as seen in the eyes of God, and there are currently none living. The last was killed years ago— My blade should suffice, if not then, I suppose I could run it over with the truck.” 

Dean rubbed the sweat from his upper lip. “You mess up that paint job, you’re fixing it yourself.”

Castiel gazed at him with his brows pulled down, offended. 

Dean tilted his glass to his lips again, but found it empty, “Okay, all that’s left is finding the people this thing’s taken,” He pushed up and went to the sink to refill it, “It ran off with kids, Cas… Sara’s husband—two entire families. It can’t have taken them far—“

Castiel looked away and shook his head; “It didn’t.”

Dean gulped the water down as if parched, ignored the dribble of it from the corners of his mouth in his eagerness; “Good, then we can at least get these people back—“

It was the look, the woe and regret in Castiel’s eyes and the pinch of his lips. 

Dean felt a chill go up his spine; “Cas… Where did it take these people?”

“Dean—“

He felt his jaw tightening, “Don’t you dare tell me—”

Castiel focused on the wall; “The only way to rescue them now is to kill this demon… I-I can find a reaper to help with their souls, but,” He shook his head, “Crawling Ones don’t kidnap people, Dean… They eat them.”

0-0-0

Jay came back a little after noon to pick up something for baby Jason, a diaper or a toy or something. Dean was sitting at the kitchen table when he came in, asked if the older man would sit.

He didn’t let Castiel tell him, was afraid the little guy wouldn’t break the news easily, he hadn’t quite grasped subtelty. Unfortunately, Dean didn’t know if he could break the news easily himself to be honest. He decided the best way, was the direct way. 

“We know what we’re dealing with now.”

Jay’s brows lifted; “Oh?”

“Cas says they’re called the Crawling Ones… I—I think they’re more like spiders. They’re responsible for transporting souls in hell… Crash course, Hell is real, apparently Heaven is too. OK? Good, I—I’ll spare you the details about Hell, but these demons don’t move souls in one piece.”

Jay shifted uncomfortably in his seat; “What do you mean?”

Dean worked his tongue at the backs of his teeth; “I know you and Bill have been up in the mountains looking for these people, so I’m just going to tell you now that it’s a waste of your time. You’re not going to find them.”

“You know where they are? Where has this thing taken them? Where did they go!”

Dean hated this part, hated it more than pretty much anything— “They—uh… They never left their houses. The ash you found—“ His throat clicked when he swallowed.

Jay leaned back in his seat , shocked, hands curled into fists on the tabletop, eyes wide and horrified, “The ash—That—That’s what was left of them? Ashes?”

“This demon, when it transports a soul, it’s ONLY the soul. They swallow them a-and—” He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t tell Jay that the demon chewed souls up and spat them out like tough spinach, he couldn’t say it and see the horror and realization on Jay’s face. Dean met his eyes earnestly, pleadingly; “I hope we’re wrong—Jay, you’ve got to believe me, I hope like hell that we’re wrong and we find them in a fucking cave or something, but Cas,” he looked to the angel standing by the window with his arms crossed, “Cas is rarely wrong about these things. He’s—he’s an expert.”

Jay looked confused and heartbroken, “So, all of them—even Nez. They’re gone, and their—their souls are trapped in this thing’s belly.”

Dean worked his jaw and nodded; “I’m sorry… I wish this would have ended differently but—“

“Those families had children—Babies. I remember when they were born!” 

Castiel lifted his chin when he spoke; “The only hope they have now is that we can trap and kill this demon… Afterward, a Reaper will escort them to their respective afterlives.”

“Reaper?” Jay stared at him as if he were able to peer beneath the flesh and catch a glimpse of Castiel’s inner workings. “What are you talking about? How do you know this? What are you!”

Castiel answered him, truthfully, before Dean could stop him. Jay’s eyes widened and after a moment he started laughing like maybe he thought it was a joke, but then stopped and stared at Castiel with an expression of dawning horror and his skin went strangely gray.

Dean hoped the man wasn’t having a heart attack. 

Castiel spoke with urgency, and calm clarity, his words carefully chosen and measured in the low grate of his voice; “I wish it hadn’t come to this, but this demon will not stop, it will continue to devour souls until it is put down, and the only way to do that is with a weapon capable of killing a demon… However, it is smart, it knows I’m here, it knows Dean is here, it knows what we are capable of. It will not be careless as it has been. If it hasn’t already moved on, our only way of killing it is to draw it out and trap it.”

Dean tapped a fingertip against the table; “We know what it wants, so all we—“

Jay’s back straightened and his eyes became hard; “You mean Sara… You want to use Sara and Jason as bait!”

“We know it wants them… If we don’t stop it now it’s just going to move into another town and hurt more people. We don’t have a choice, Jay. We have to stop this thing while we can.”

Jay was shaking; “You’re not using my daughter as bait!”

“It might be the only way to get it into the trap—“

“No,” His voice shook; “You can use me, but you’re not putting my daughter anywhere near that thing again.”

“Shouldn’t you let her decide that?” Dean said, “This thing killed her husband—“

Jay rubbed his brow. “Then she should get to kill it, not be dangled at it like a worm on a hook!”

Dean shook his head; “No. Either me or Cas have to be the one to kill it, the weapon we’ll have to use is too dangerous…” He glanced sidelong at Castiel; “It could just as easily be used to mangle her soul as it could kill this demon.” 

Jay stared at them, his mouth hanging open in shock. He made a sound in the back of his throat, some insult or curse Dean couldn’t understand and slouched in his seat, arms crossed tightly over his chest. “We’ll find another way.”

“There is no other way,” Castiel said, the tone of his voice was gentle, but there was power behind it. 

Jay pushed himself up, “We have two days before that thing comes back… We will figure something out. You are not using my daughter and grandson as bait for a demon. I won’t let you,” He made a slicing, dismissive gesture with his hand and quietly left the room. 

0-0-0

Dean was angry. He stepped outside into Jay’s backyard and kicked a clump of dirt toward the fence line, frightening a few chickens wandering around pecking at the grass. He stalked to the edge of the property and threw his arms on top of the fence, bowed his head into his arms and cursed the heat of the sun on his back. 

He could hear the knocking of a hammer against plywood, people talking. If he craned his neck and leaned over the fence he could see the front door of the house the demon had invaded. Most of the town was there, removing broken furniture, comforting the woman whose husband and teenaged son had been taken. 

Dean turned his face away, couldn’t think with their faces and voices still so hopeful that their loved ones and friends would come back. At the same time he wondered how the demon did it. It was different in hell, they just crept along and—and ate you, piece by piece and somehow you wound up whole again at some other demon’s mercy. It was different here, there was an actual body it had to deal with before it could get to the soul. 

Castiel appeared at his elbow, jacket and coat still inside, sleeves rolled up. He squinted toward the house at the end of the street, but Dean didn’t think it was because of the sun, little guy squinted at everything. 

Castiel sighed; “He won’t tell them—And he won’t stop sending Bill Kingston to look in the mountains.”

Dean scratched his thumbnail against his chin; “Why are they looking up there anyway?”

“The mountains are riddled with caves and places for a creature to hide.”

Dean turned his head toward them, scanned each peak and the tire tracks he could see leading toward them. “He won’t find it, will he.”

“No, and if he does, it will likely kill him on sight.” 

Dean rubbed his face, “You can keep this thing from hurting Sara and her baby, right?”

There was a hesitation in his voice. Dean didn’t think he would have noticed it if he didn’t have that weird connection with Castiel, but it was there, faint, but it may as well have been a mile wide; 

“Yes.”

Dean turned and stared at him, wary, “Cas if you have any doubt that you can protect her from this thing, then I’m gonna have to agree with Jay on this one and say we need to find another way of trapping this thing.”

“I can protect her, and her child.”

“Why don’t I believe you… Jesus, Cas, if you’re mojo is this bad already we might need to call in some backup.”

Castiel’s expression soured. “Backup? You mean Ellen and—” 

“I mean another angel.”

“The entirety of the host wants nothing more than for Michael to take you as his vessel, Dean. They’ve already proven they couldn’t care less about humanity, or the presence of demons on earth.”

Dean looked away, over the field, forced himself to calm; “There was another angel—when Zechariah sent me to Tomorrowland… Had this goofy looking kid for a vessel, his name was Samrael or something.”

Castiel lifted a brow and Dean could feel his preverbal feathers ruffling. “Sammael?”

“Something like that. Maybe he could help?”

“Dean, Sammael was an angel that defected with Lucifer, he was thrown down, and perished in the lowest pits of hell.” 

Dean’s eye twitched. “There were other angels that were cast down with Lucifer?”

“Multitudes.” 

“Yeah, that’s not scary at all,” He rubbed his face.

“Dean, the future Zechariah showed you is impossible unless you endeavor to make it so… The fact that Sammael was part of it just proves that it is an inert possibility. The doorways that would lead to it are long gone. Sammael is dead.”

“Okay, what if it’s not Sammael? What if it was Samrael or San Andreas or something. I can’t remember his name, alright?” 

“Samrael isn’t a real—“ Castiel rolled his eyes; “We are on our own, Dean. No other angels will help us.”

“We need to find this thing before it hurts someone else, you’re powering down for whatever reason, so there’s no way to track the damned thing. It could be in the mountains, or it could be anywhere!”

“One demon, even one of this caliber, wouldn’t leave much by the way of omens, and unless it is actively stalking, it would be next to impossible to track by itself, but it isn’t by itself.”

Dean turned to him curiously; “It’s not?”

“The souls it devoured. We might not be able to track the demon itself, but we can track the souls it’s taken.” 

“How?”

“We need to locate an object one of the victims cherished. The item would hold an echo of their energy.”

“And?”

“When we have identified their energy, it’s simply a matter of following it.” 

“So, its kind of like letting a blood hound sniff a t-shirt?”

“More or less,” Castiel bobbed his head to the side a little, Dean had seen Sam do that same thing a million times. “Conceivably, we will be able to follow that residual energy, and if the soul, and therefore the demon— are still present on this plane, we should be able to locate it.”

Dean pushed back from the fence, “Do you need something specific or—“

Castiel shook his head; “Not me… You,” He turned and walked back to the house.

Dean followed, stomach suddenly in knots; “What? ME? Wh—Cas!” He followed at a quickened pace, caught the angel’s arm just inside the mudroom door and turned him; “What do you mean me? How the hell am I supposed to find a stolen soul?”

“My grace is unstable, even though I’m drawing from you something has changed. I’m not able to perform as I once was, you yourself have pointed this out. I can’t see souls any longer. If we have any hope of finding out where this demon is, YOU have to do it.”

“HOW!” Dean balked, “I don’t have demon radar! Not like that! If I can’t see them then I can’t find them!”

“You underestimate yourself,” Castiel pushed past him and crouched to affix Sputnik’s lead to her vest. “The grace you have, if you can manage to use it, will give you the ability to do more than see the color of a person’s soul or manipulate magnetic code on ATM cards.”

Dean swallowed nervously; “It already does. I can do the whole Fester Aadams thing with a lightbulb in my mouth.”

Castiel froze, expression disturbed. 

Dean wrinkled his nose defensively; “I was bored, OK!”

Castiel pushed Sputnik’s lead into Dean’s hands and went for the door.

Dean rubbed his neck ashamedly and followed the angel out of the house and down the street. 

Nobody asked why they were going into the damaged house, nobody said much of anything. Dean protested quietly with hissed condemnations or calls of the angel’s name. He tried to get lost in the crowd of people cleaning things or repairing furniture outside but Castiel would stop and his eyes would light right on Dean’s and hold, denim blue and insistent.

Dean swallowed bile and climbed the steps to the angel’s side, tugging Sputnik along behind him.

The interior of the house looked completely different from the night before. All the broken crockery and glass had been swept up, the children’s drawings had been collected and pressed carefully into photo albums to protect them. The weeping mother and other children were in a neighboring house with friends and a few of the community’s elders for comfort. All the ash had been oh so innocently cleared away. Sputnik sneezed a few times but didn’t seem at all hesitant as she sniffed along the baseboards.

The air smelled like cleaning products and only a faint hint of decay and sulfur. But, Dean could still feel the echo of the demon plainly in the house: a cold sick ache under his skin that made his grace bubble erratically. It felt like indigestion and the beginnings of a panic attack. 

Castiel put a hand on his shoulder and urged him toward the hall. “Focus.”

“Kind of hard to do when the fucking air is screaming DEMON at me,” Dean tried to take long, slow breaths, but they quickened and became shallow the closer to the rear bedroom they got. He forced himself to swallow, forced himself to think of something other than horrible grinning faces and awful teeth. 

The back bedroom was small, nine feet by twelve feet, the carpet had been pulled up and there were plastic storage boxes of the young boy’s things stacked in the closet. Dean could see black, elongated handprints and footprints along the walls and ceiling where the demon had scurried even if they had left no physical mark. His voice shook; “Okay, what am I focusing on again?”

“This was the young boy’s room. Focus on his presence, not the demon’s.”

Dean snorted; “Oh, sure, easy for you to say—“

“Dean.”

He flinched, inhaled deeply and shut his eyes. Just don’t focus on the demon, OK. He braced his feet shoulder width apart and muttered; ‘Okay, okay’, under his breath. He could do this, it was easy. Just find what felt like the kid, not the demon, the kid… 

All he could feel was demon. Phantom aches of hooks in his skin pulled his muscles taut and he rubbed at his shoulder trying to work the pain out. His skin felt sticky with cold, sour sweat, “Cas—“

“Keep trying.” 

“I AM trying—“

“Not hard enough. You would use this same technique to locate a soul if you were searching a wide area. The demon was only here for five minutes, the boy has lived here for fifteen years, his presence will be deeper.”

“I can’t do this.”

“Dean.” 

“I don’t know what I’m doing—“

“You do. Now, do it.”

“I can’t, Cas—“

“You can.”

“No, I can’t! All I’m getting is DEMON right in my face!”

“Focus—“

“I AM focused! I can’t see anything else, I’m not a fucking psychic! I can’t feel people’s souls or find them unless they’re right in front of me! I can’t DO this!”

“Stop telling me what you can’t do and show me what you can!” He squeezed. Dean felt the pressure of Castiel in all his immensity through the grip of his all too human palm. “You’ve done it before, you can do it now.” 

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You listen to conversations from other rooms. You pick up on Sam’s emotions, or Bobby, Ellen and Jo’s—“

Dean shook his head, tried to push past the angel back into the hall, but Castiel caught him, one hand on either side of his face and demanded his attention. His pupils were wider than normal, little beads of sweat stood out on his brow and upper lip. He had what looked like the beginnings of a sunburn on his brow, cheeks, and the bridge of his nose. Dean’s heart skipped a beat and the fearful voices in his head fell silent.

“You find me,” Castiel’s voice was barely audible but it resonated to Dean’s very foundations, “You find me almost every night. I can feel you. While I search you’re there with me… You find me without any effort even though I have warded this body as well as I have your own. You find me, so I know you can find this boy. If you would just put your fears aside, you could do more than that,” He bared his teeth, fingers biting into Dean’s scalp in his reluctant urgency, but no words came out. He seemed almost pained, focus slipping to something within himself and in that moment Dean saw fear in the angel’s eyes. He didn’t know what had birthed it, but it was there, fear and uncertainty and he felt it himself.

Dean lifted his hands and caught the angel’s wrists, bowed his chin to his chest and pulled in a shuddering breath. He found Castiel every night? How? Yeah, occasionally he dreamed about him—more than occasionally, in truth—but he’d never… had he? He’d never left his body and went LOOKING for Castiel, had he? That—that was just creepy. But, at the same time those dreams had felt so real. Random places with Castiel standing on street corners. Vague scenery, images that tingled in his mind with the hint of scent, taste and sensation. 

What if he could? What if he could do it? What would that make him?

“OK,” Dean swallowed, tried to draw moisture back into his mouth and throat, “The kid, not the demon.”

Castiel’s shoulders seemed to deflate, the tension bleeding out of him; “I’ll stay here, if you become too entangled in the demon’s afterimage I will draw you back,” He shifted his feet against the floor, as if bracing himself for impact, “Start slowly, open yourself up to the residual energies around you and try not to resist them. Let them pass over you like a current.” 

“Okay, a current. Sure,” Dean squeezed his eyes closed, tightened his grip on Castiel’s forearms and pulled every muscle in his body tight in his effort to push past the sulfuric burn of the demon’s residual presence. It didn’t feel like a current. Currents reminded him of rivers and streams—This reminded him of a fucking riptide. A sudden unrelenting pressure that intended to pull him out to sea and drown him. 

He couldn’t open himself up all at once, mainly because he was still afraid of inundating himself with the unfiltered sensation of a demon’s aura. His mind rebelled at the idea, and his skin crawled; but carefully, like testing the waters of a murky lake, he let himself work deeper into it. Slowly the room began to fade out. The noise from outside became muffled behind a low monotone ringing—the echo of his own screams in the pit hushed and Dean could FEEL the demon scurrying around the interior of the room, like the flutter of an insect against the back of his neck, hungry and single minded. Its blackness swallowed all other color, all the joy and hope and energy of the boy it had killed. 

Dean felt it behind his eyes, its intent as it had come down from the mountains—empty and so hungry—the boy had been reading by the beam of his flashlight when the beam had flickered and died. He’d tripped on his way to the closet for more batteries and the impact of his body against the wall had displaced a few grains of salt too many. The demon had its opening and launched itself through the window right into the boy in a shower of glass and a POP of lightbulbs. 

“Dean.” 

The pressure of Castiel’s hands and arms around him increased, and with a surge of effort, he pulled back a little, hands shaking on Castiel’s arms, breathed in and out but couldn’t stop the images from playing out on the backs of his eyes. The demon’s hands and TEETH! That AWFULFACE! 

The grace bubbled up again, tried to push out against anything and anyone around him, defensive. Propelled on the force of his fear.

“Breathe. Dean, breathe, nothing is going to harm you. Focus on the boy, not the demon. You’re doing well.”

He nodded, could feel himself shaking, could feel Sputnik pulling urgently on her lead, yapping in distress.

The boy—The boy. 

Fifteen—Fifteen year old boy—

His senses sizzled, popped and suddenly there was more—the blackness began to peel back like layers of paint, revealing a completely different picture beneath. It washed over Dean like a wave, silencing the hungry, all consuming pressure of the demon.

Fast cars and bicycles—He and his father hunted mule deer in the late fall with a few other men from the town. He wanted to be an engineer when he grew up, build equipment that would make a settlement on Mars possible. 

They all called him TK. He’d saved his five-year-old cousin who’d been playing in a dry creek bed from a flash flood in the spring and been recognized by the council. His soul was the color of a sapphire, blue with edges in silver like the tops of the Rocky Mountains. 

Dean could see outlines where the kid’s bed had been, his footprints where he liked to dance when nobody was looking. Where he’d pushed pins into the walls to hold up posters of classic cars and pictures of his family. 

Dean’s mouth felt dry and his insides were shaking from the effort of pushing back the ugly taint of the demon in the room. “Cas… Cas, I found him… W-what now?”

“Pull back—Find everywhere you can that resonates with his energy.”

He nodded, heaved a few deep breaths and focused on the boy’s footprints, followed them out into the hall, splashes of color from his brother and sister, his parents—Dean pushed past them, lingered longer than he should on the warmth of their love and happiness, found himself seeming to float, a guest behind the echo, along for the ride. Faster and faster images passed behind his eyes. Running and playing, games and talking with girls. School and science fairs, friends and first kisses. Dean pulled back farther and farther, like a rocket shooting off into the stratosphere, he saw a shimmering pattern, intricate and dazzling like lace, or Christmas lights seen from space, the lasting impact TK had left on the world— 

A pinprick, tiny and unbelievably weak, hidden—flickering—

As soon as Dean found it the energy reached back, latched on to Dean like a wild animal, all fear and uncertainty and remembered pain—

Help! HELPMEPLEASE!HELPUS!

Dean felt pressure on the back of his neck, black and ugly and—AWARENESSRAGEHATEGREEDHUNGER—Felt a flicker of panic from Castiel and was wrenched free, ricocheting around in a tunnel of some sort, like a bullet fired from a gun. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, just jerked with the impact of his returning awareness, felt himself collide bodily with Castiel’s chest as he came onto his toes in shock, eyes flung wide, arms clenched tight around the angel’s shoulders, fingers tangled in dark hair. 

He stayed there for a moment, disorientated, blinked dazedly at the ceiling and struggled to reclaim the steady pace of his breathing. 

“Are you alright?” Castiel’s voice sounded strange, it seemed to register as something more than sound. The vibration of it raised the little hairs on Dean’s arms and the back of his neck. 

Dean nodded, straightened his legs and took a shuddering breath; “Peachy.” 

Castiel’s hands passed over his head and face, fingertips catching in the prickles of hair on Dean’s jaws and chin. He could feel the whorls of each fingerprint, the static charge of the ANGEL through the flesh… The acidic burn of all too human fear bubbling in Castiel’s core—the heart like pulse beating from the scar. Something—something deep and familiar, hidden—STOLEN— 

“I found the kid… He—he grabbed me.”

“I know.”

Dean pressed his nose a little deeper into Castiel’s collar, searching for what he didn’t know. “It’s still close, but not for long. It—it’s going to leave—” He could feel the boy’s soul, even now, like the point on a compass, like when Castiel had grabbed him and shown him how to find the energy his amulet pointed to. The directions weren’t the same… Castiel would leave. He would continue looking for God, and Dean would take Bill and Jay and go after the demon. He wouldn’t have this FEELING for a long time. The calm—the connection between Castiel’s grace and his own that made him aware of exactly how ALONE in his head he had always been, and appreciate the angel’s presence to alleviate it. 

Dean forced himself to step back, couldn’t let himself linger, as much as he wanted to. His legs felt rubbery, but he stayed on his feet. 

Castiel rubbed the pads of his thumbs against his fingertips, shoulders hunched in as if trying to cling to the phantom sensation of Dean pressed so close. 

Their eyes met, held for precious seconds longer than was strictly necessary, warmth and sadness and longing sparking into life between them—Then Dean looked away, chest tight, and bent to scratch Sputnik behind the ears. “We’ve got work to do.” 

0-0-0

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	47. The Dark Man; Part 2-- The Golden Goose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took too long, and is, in all truth, TOO LONG!  
> Ugh. 
> 
> Okay, 47 was supposed to post exactly 9 days after 46, but stupid me didn't finish the auto post option before I closed the window, so it just sat in the draft folder, so after a week goes by what I thought was the update date and there was no reaction from any of you, I panicked, bullied myself and contemplated taking the whole fic down because I'd obviously ruined it. So, I decide to rewrite the chapter-- and only then realize, I didn't actually post it the first time, and I'm much happier with this second version so I scrapped the first and TADA! Now this happened. 
> 
> I am going to edit this tomorrow because I'm exhausted and some things will make more sense in Italics. Also, I might go back and break this up into 2 chapters because it is SO LONG. Seriously. I'm sorry, and at the same time, not sorry at all!

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

People stared as Dean and Castiel exited the house. Dean could feel the weight of their gazes, the fear and accusation in their hushed voices. They gave them a wide berth and Dean wondered what exactly his ‘soul searching’ bullshit had looked like to them. Had they been able to feel it? Did they know that there was something Not Normal about him? Could they tell just by looking at him?

He made it to the edge of the yard and leaned his hips against a low rung in the horse fence. He peered out into the corral and saw the horse, Kia, shifting restlessly back and forth while a man in an off white hat brushed her down and stroked her neck, murmuring in an attempt to calm her. 

“Dean?”

He turned and regarded the angel at his side, and without speaking turned back to the horse and her caretaker.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” He heaved in a deep breath and let it out, watched as the horse nuzzled into the man’s hand. “I need to find Jay… We’ve only got until sundown to catch this thing, then it’s gonna move on and hell knows where it’ll go,” He leaned forward and gave Sputnik another scratch behind her ears, then pushed to his feet and followed the edge of the fence to the road. 

Castiel followed him silently, eyes squinted against the sun. 

When Dean asked where Jay was he was directed to an older mobile home two streets over. It was a mustard yellow color with off white siding. The blowing dust had worn the paint off most flat edges, exposing the aluminum to the elements where it had begun to corrode. The front porch was cluttered and sagging with a wide strip of abused astro-turf from the crooked stairs to the door and wind chimes clinked in the breeze.

A large brown dog of some undeterminable breed was lying across the top step, tethered by a length of chain to the porch railing. It eyed Sputnik and lifted its hackles as they approached. Sputnik returned the favor, straining against her lead snarling. Dean pulled her back and in desperation let Castiel take her. She calmed immediately and sagged into the dust with a look of furry disappointment on her face. She let out a sigh and sneezed. 

Dean called out as he approached, paused off to the side of the porch where he hoped the dog couldn’t jump at him. He’d found himself unnaturally wary of dogs, kept imagining the half skinned dark shapes of hellhounds whenever he heard one bark or saw one from the corner of his eye. 

“Jay, you in there?”

There was murmuring from inside and a moment an older woman with long grey hair and a round, wizened face appeared. She blinked at Dean owlishly; “He left about an hour ago. Said he had errands to run, but he’d be back in an hour or two.” 

Dean scuffed a hand across his mouth; “Is Bill in there?”

“Bill?” She pulled her thin eyebrows together; “Bill Peck?”

Dean shook his head; “Bill Kingston.”

The woman’s eyes lit up; “OH! HIM!” She shook her head, mouth compressed into a secretive grin and drummed her fingers rapidly on the porch railing; “No, he’s not here.”

Dean blinked at her slowly and turned to look at Castiel.

“But if you see him tell him I said hello!” The old woman waved and blew a kiss, “Give him that for me too!”

From inside came a young woman’s voice; “Grandma!” And scattered male laughter.

Dean tucked his chin in confusion and turned to watch the woman shuffle back inside. He caught the young woman in there muttering as he and Castiel left; “Grandma, you’re awful!”

“You get to be my age not much gets your motor running. You’ve got to jump on it when you get the chance!”

The young woman grumbled in misery. 

The wind had picked up by the time Dean and Castiel made it back to Jay’s house. Just as the old woman had said, Jay’s jeep wasn’t parked outside his house anymore and there were tire tracks in the dirt heading back toward the main road. 

It wasn’t the lack of automobiles that unsettled Dean, it was the fact that the front door was open and he could see a scattering of coarse rock salt on the concrete stoop. 

“Dean—“ Castiel was on the other side of his truck, eyes on the ground. 

Dean felt his heart start to beat a little faster and ground his teeth as he came around the back of the truck. 

Both driver’s side tires were deeply gouged on the sidewall, not just slashed, but stabbed more than once. Irreparable damage. 

Dean cursed, loudly and lunged around the back of the truck heading for Jay’s front door. 

The house is empty, Sarah’s things are gone, so are the baby’s. Dean finds a single sock lying in the hall and a pacifier dropped under the bed, but the message is clear.

Jay’s errands included making his daughter and grandson scarce so Dean wouldn’t be able to talk to them. 

Dean breathed in deeply and let it out slowly, repeated the process and turned his eyes to the clock on the wall. It was well after noon, nearing three-PM. Jay had at least an hour head start, if he wanted to get Sarah someplace safe before nightfall he would have headed east. The nearest town was practically a pit-stop, but there was a shitty motel. Dean had filled up his gas tank there while coming in. 

Instantly his thoughts sped up, pictured his car locked miles away in Bill’s old service station. What if Jay had slashed her tires as well? He’d just got those tires—Just got the ones on Castiel’s truck as well, to tell the truth—tires were not fucking cheap! 

He snarled and snatched up his duffle from the corner, swung it on and stomped outside; “Come on—“ 

“Where are you going?” Castiel gave Sputnik’s lead a little shake and she started trotting off after them. 

Dean didn’t answer, and a moment later felt Castiel brush his mind, felt words and images popping into existence between his thoughts. 

What happened?

Jay took his daughter and grandson away? 

How are we going to lure the demon into a trap without them?

Shouldn’t we try to contact Bill Kingston?

“Cas, just—just get outta my head!” His heels dug into the dirt a little harder. A few people called out to him, asked what had happened, where are you going? But Dean ignored them, felt his energy bubbling up in anger and feared lashing out at those around him and causing them real harm. 

Castiel lagged behind for a little while, but reappeared at Dean’s elbow not long after, Sputnik trotting at his side, tongue out, eyes narrowed from the brightness of the sun and her proximity to the dusty earth. 

It was a long walk. 

Dean remembered bouncing along in Bill’s truck but having to walk it was torture in and of itself. 

For one thing, it was hot. For another there were snakes. Dean didn’t like fucking snakes. He’d chopped one into pieces with a machete once and the thing had still tried to bite him. 

Sputnik, on her tiny little legs, and her tiny soft little paws, wouldn’t stand a chance against one. And tried as she did to keep up Dean took her lead back from Castiel, tucked her pudgy little body under one arm, hand on her chest, and let her pant and hang in his grip despondently. 

It took the better part of two and a half hours to make it to the service station and by that time Dean could feel the tightness of the flesh on the back of his neck and arms, and taste the ash of the earth on his tongue. Sweat had soaked through the fabric of his shirt and it clung to his back and sides like a second skin, accumulating dust particles until he could FEEL the mud building in the creases of his skin. 

Castiel it seemed had fared no better. His tie was hanging at an odd angle, loose about his neck, the knot hovering somewhere over his right pectoral, and he had gained similar slicks of sweat through the back of his shirt. Dean could see the odd little freckle through the fabric and the growing smears of dirt. 

Walking in the heat, toward the ever growing outline of Bill’s service station was vaguely familiar. Part of Dean wanted to make a snarky comment about Castiel please not blowing the windows out of this joint if he had something to say. 

He glanced at his watch as he sat Sputnik down in the parking lot and went to the bay door, had to stand on tiptoe and buff the grit off the yellowed plastic window to see in and make sure nobody had bothered his car. He thought, but wasn’t sure, that he could see something grayish and fluffy asleep on her roof and muttered about Bill’s damned shop cat, then dropped to his knees and set about trying to pick the padlock on the door. 

Padlocks were tricky. Doors? No problem, he’d picked locks on doors since he was eight. But Padlocks were a different story. The damned thing was old, but Dean recognized that blue stripe around the bottom, remembered Dad had kept a lock like this on a toolbox he’d carried in the trunk. Dean was pretty sure he’d kept a pistol or something in there that he didn’t want young Sam or Dean to get hold of. But, that hadn’t stopped Dean, once he’d learned how, from trying to pick the damned thing every time he got the chance. By the time he’d figured out how to do it John had emptied the toolbox and the mystery, and fun of it was spoiled. 

By the second try Castiel was standing over his shoulder watching with the intensity of a thunderstorm. Dean could feel it like ants crawling across the back of his neck. He tightened his jaw; “You got a problem there, Cas?”

“No.”

“Then stop with the hovering.”

Castiel rolled his eyes and turned away to peer into the dirty front windows, Sputnik following tiredly in his wake. 

Dean wrinkled his nose spitefully and gave the tension wrench a hard twist, popping the lock. His fingers were tingling, singed from having to hold the scorching metal for so long, he threw it toward the dilapidated gas pumps in retribution, twisted the latch and jerked the door up with a heave of effort and a loud clattering of old coasters on their rods. 

The air that rushed out was cool, smelled vaguely of litterbox and overused air conditioner, the Impala was covered in dusty paw prints and standing on the trunk eyes locked on Dean—lips rolled back and fur bristled— It let out a low yowl and swatted savagely with one large paw.

Dean’s jaw dropped open and he slammed the door back down with a grunt. He straightened, hands lifted, palms down; “Was that a bobcat?”

Castiel tilted his face toward Dean with his brows pulled in and his lips pursed.

“I think there was a bobcat on my car.” 

“Yeah, I think so too.” 

Dean wiggled his fingers uncomfortably. “D’you think you can talk to it? M-make it move?”

“I doubt it would refrain from attacking long enough for me to make an introduction. Wild animals are much more volatile than domesticated ones.”

Sputnik made a ‘wuff’ sound between her crooked teeth and seemed to nod in agreement. 

Dean scrubbed another spot clean on the window and cupped his hands around his eyes. Castiel did the same, staring in with a curious tilt to his brows. “Yeah, that’s a bobcat.” 

Dean stared at it helplessly; “You think it ate Bill’s cat? How the hell did it get in there!”

The bobcat paced a circle on the Impala’s trunk and sat, then began cleaning its claws with its massive teeth. 

Dean struck the door with flat palms and made a snarling, barking noise; “HEY!” But the bobcat just yawned and curled its paws under itself. 

Dean repeated the noise twice, hoping to scare the thing back into the rear room long enough to remove his car from the animal’s vicinity, but the big cat just ignored him, every so often turned its big yellow eyes to Dean and hissed in agitation. 

“Dean,” Castiel tapped him with the back of his hand and pointed back the way they’d come. 

Dean turned, resigned, and saw Bill’s truck bouncing swiftly along the reservation road, kicking up a massive cloud of dust behind it. The truck didn’t even slow down as it came to the intersection, lurched and bounced right across the pavement and skidded to a halt barely a foot from Dean. 

Bill slammed out of the truck, his weathered face twisted into a snarl, and leveled a sawed-off shotgun at Dean’s middle; “What the hell kind of bullshit are you tryin’ to pull!”

Dean lifted his hands, felt Castiel’s energy revving up to strike and Sputnik’s hackles lifted, a low growl rumbling in her chest; “Me? No—I’m tryin’ to get rid of this thing!”

“I go up there lookin’ for sign of this thing and when I come back everyone’s half in a panic because you left! They said you just packed up your shit and LEFT! How the fuck are we supposed to keep this thing off those people if the only thing it’s scared of takes off!”

Dean’s voice rose and he gestured violently with the blade of his hand toward the east; “It’s gonna move! It’s not going to stick around knowing that me and Cas are there! The only chance we had of drawing that thing into a trap was if we got Sara to play decoy! I told Jay and he packs her up and takes off!”

Bill’s body seems to freeze up, he doesn’t move an inch; “You wanted to use Sara for what?”

Dean had a feeling that he might just be looking at the man who would kill him and he tried to put as much distance between Bill and himself as he could, backing up against the bay door and pushing thoughts toward Castiel as he struggled to make the plan sound reasonable. 

“The demon wanted Sara and the baby. If we could have tricked it into thinking they were unprotected we could have trapped it. Now it’s going to blow out of here and hurt other people!” He swiped the tip of his tongue over his lips, “I wouldn’t have let that thing get near Sara or her kid, you gotta know that. I wouldn’t have let her get hurt—Cas wouldn’t have let that happen either! But, Jay wouldn’t listen, he wouldn’t listen and now more people are going to die.”

Bill flicked his eyes back and forth between Dean and Castiel, shifted his feet uncomfortably and spoke in a high, strained voice; “What about me? W-what if I just stand there, out in the open. Would it come at me?”

“No… The only chance we’ve got is Sara. The demon already tried to get her twice, it wants her—for whatever fucked up reason it’s got—it wants Sara and that baby… And if it can’t have them then it’s going to go somewhere else.”

“How do you know that?” 

Dean tightened his jaw and glanced at Castiel. “Lucky guess.” 

“Bull SHIIIT!” Bill said with a dramatic shake of his fuzzy head. “How the hell do you know what that demon is gonna do?”

Dean hesitated, then just said it; “Because I can track it. I can feel what it’s gonna do and if it can’t get Sara, it’s gonna blast outta here like a rocket and tear up any poor soul that gets between it and the devil’s gate. And that’s gonna be on our heads.”

Bill didn’t move for all of five seconds, and when he did it was only to reach into his pocket and pull out a rough looking cell phone. He dialed without even looking and held the phone to his left ear. It rang and rang and rang—and went to voicemail. 

He tried again, dialed a different number. It rang and rang and—

Bill’s jaw tightened; “Heya, Jay? You—uhm—you talked to this boy Singer sent us?”

Dean could hear the other man’s voice through the phone; “Yes, I did.”

“Is what he’s sayin’ legit? Because what he’s sayin’ don’t make much sense to me, Jay. It really don’t and I—”

There was quiet on the other end of the line.

“You know I got your back, right? Jay, you know that, right? We been huntin’ together now for twenty-five years. You know I’d never let anybody put Sara or Little’ Jay in trouble, you know that, right? I’d never let no one hurt ‘em. I’d die first.” 

“Yeah,” Jay said softly; “Yeah, I know.”

“So you know I’d never let that demon touch her. I’d let it kill me first, understand?”

Jay was quiet, breathed in deeply and let it out; “I know.”

Bill inhaled deeply and pinned the phone to his ear with his shoulder, both hands back on his gun—

“But, Bill, you can’t understand. I won’t put her in danger like that. Nothing in the world is worth that… I can’t take that risk.”

Bill’s gun lowered and his brows pinched toward the center of his forehead; “Be reasonable, man—She wouldn’t be hurt! You know that!”

“Bill. I am not using my daughter and grandson as bait for a demon. I won’t bring them into this. I won’t do it.”

“If we don’t more people are gonna die! It’ll fly off somewhere we can’t get to and it’ll start killing again! Jay, you gotta use your head on this—“

“I don’t care.”

Bill’s whole body locked up. 

“Let it go somewhere else. At least my family—my people—will be safe.”

“Sara would do it. If she knew, she’d do it! This ain’t like you, Jay. This—we wouldn’t let it hurt her, you know that!”

Jay’s voice shook; “No… I-if I see any of you again before sunrise,” He swallowed, “If I see any of you again before this thing is gone… I’ll shoot you.”

The line clicked and went dead. 

Bill shouted into the phone twice; “Jay, answer me, damn you! JAY!” 

Dean stood there silently, feeling Castiel’s grace wrapped around him protectively, feeling the angel’s wings lifted and splayed, ready for attack—And Bill turned with his face pulled tight, eyes shining. 

Bill stared down at his phone, snuffed pathetically, and lowered his gun. “That dumb sonuvabitch,” He wiped his nose on the arm of his jacket and shuffled toward Dean with his head bowed. 

Bill already had the bay door shoved up before Dean remembered the furry butt of his own issue and he grabbed at Bill with a snarl of warning—“NO WAIT!”

The Bobcat was waiting, in the floor now. It growled deep and low and hissed at Sputnik as if it intended to eat her face. 

Sputnik snarled back but hid behind Castiel’s legs, tail tucked. 

Bill jerked back at the insistent pull of Dean’s hands; “What the hell!” He pushed Dean’s hands away.

The bobcat made another low rumbling noise and proceeded to trot right up to Bill and rub playfully against his kneecaps. 

“’s just Rusty,” Bill scuffed his fingertips through the big cat’s fur. “Just a big ol’ pussycat!” He strode into the garage, the bobcat following behind him, stump of a tail in the air. 

Dean stared after them shocked.

From the back room Bill called; “Oh! Someone got a rabbit! Pappy thanks ya’!” 

Castiel bent and drew Sputnik to his chest, then led Dean inside. 

The back room of the station was larger than Dean had anticipated. Though sparsely decorated it seemed cozy. A messy bed in the back corner, a desk with a lamp and a laptop. A shelf with assorted movies, lots of seventies and eighties action flicks. An ancient powder blue fridge on top of which was a tattered wicker basket filled with partly shredded blankets. A tiny two burner stove and antique percolator. And in the nearest corner was a frayed recliner and a massive shelf of books that reminded Dean oddly of Bobby’s. The wall by the door was mostly windows, patterned at about knee height with smudged nose and paw prints where Rusty had likely been chasing birds while Bill was away. 

Bill was standing in an interior store room that looked to double as a storm shelter, filling his own bag of weaponry, Rusty following at his heel, practically prancing with a deflated pink football between his teeth. The bobcat made a few chuffing noises and swatted the back of Bill’s leg with his massive paw. 

Dean could hear the sound of claws pulling at fabric and flesh. “So… Rusty’s a bobcat?”

Bill grunted and snatched the football from the cat’s mouth, turned and lobbed it across the room onto the bed. Rusty bounded after it in two terrifyingly large springs; “Found his mama hit by a car about six miles from here, he was the only kit to survive. Had to bottle feed him—He’s too friendly with people to make it in the wild, someone would have shot him for his skin, or ‘cause they was scared. He still sneaks out the bathroom window every so often, brings back presents—mostly rabbits, every so often a gopher or somethin’,” Bill snorted and nudged a disemboweled plush bear with the toe of his boot; “The kids back on the Rez love him, always sendin’ him presents.”

Rusty made a low yowl from the bed, it seemed too loud and too big to come from a cat his size, even if he was the biggest cat Dean had ever seen up close. It felt like he should be the size of a car. 

Sputnik pressed back into Castiel’s arms and made a low uncertain noise in her chest. Dean couldn’t exactly blame her. 

Bill snorted out a little laugh; “Sure does a good job of keepin’ would-be-thieves off the place!” He went to the tiny, ancient fridge in the corner and took out a bottle of water, lobbed it wordlessly in Dean’s direction, then did the same to Castiel and went back in to fetch out what looked like half a chicken that he proceeded to set in a cake pan on the counter for Rusty. 

Rusty leapt from the bed and padded past Dean without even so much as a sniff. Bill chuckled, “You got any idea where Jay might have taken Sara?” Bill said taking a long drink of his own water. 

Dean downed half of his and told Bill about the motel he saw on his way in. That it was just the right distance away that Jay could have taken her there. 

Bill nodded, gave Rusty an affectionate scratch behind the ears and went for the door, bag slung over his shoulder. “Think you boys can keep up?”

“You’re not worried that he said he’d shoot us?”

Bill snorted; “You say that like gettin’ shot at is something new.” 

0-0-0

Fifty-three miles, that’s what Bill said there was between his station and the nearest hotel. Fifty-three miles and they had just over an hour of sunlight left.

Or, that’s what they thought. 

Twenty minutes into the drive, engine screaming at nearly three-thousand RPM, speedometer somewhere in the mid-eighties, clouds began to gather at their backs, swarming at unnatural speed, and the radio let out a static trill in warning of severe weather. 

Dean hoped against hope that the people back on the Reservation had laid down salt and covered their windows. He hoped that leaving them hadn’t been the wrong decision, but something in his gut had begun to sour. Something started itching in the back of his mind. 

He could still feel the unsettled burning hate of the demon, could still vaguely hear TK shouting for help and fighting against the evil surrounding him. He couldn’t turn it off, as much as he wanted to. The shouting and desperation he felt from the kid was too close to what he’d experienced Downstairs, so much so his hand shook for want of a knife or restraint, he couldn’t tell which.

Dean kept telling himself that going after Jay was the smart thing to do, that it would have taken too long to get into the mountains where the demon was hiding, and it likely would have taken off as they approached, sunlight or no. It wasn’t a stupid creature, far from it. Demons were cunning and sly in ways only demons could be. They NEVER did anything unless it would come out to their benefit. 

That’s all there was to them. Pain or advance. Sometimes you got tortured, sometimes you got to do the torturing—when the knife was in your hands you’d best make the most of it—Dean shuddered and choked a little on the taste of his own saliva. 

Castiel was quiet, hand rubbing Sputnik’s head while she dozed against his thig, those too blue eyes locked on the side mirror and the reflection of the growing storm. He could feel it, probably better than Dean could, that this was not an ordinary storm. Not even one of those nasty ones that sometimes appeared out of the blue. No, this was the demon up there hiding in the rocks building itself up, conjuring a storm to hide its flight. Because, as much as Dean bragged about having control over his grace, the demon, Dean, and Castiel knew that he didn’t. As soon as the lightning truly began to pick up speed and intensity, he would lose the grip he had on things. He wouldn’t be able to find TK, or the demon, with that much electrical disturbance in the atmosphere, and if he couldn’t find it, they couldn’t catch it, and without the damned thing’s name they couldn’t summon it—if it even had a name. 

Had he not been slowly fading Castiel would have been able to hold it, would have been able to retain, or help Dean retain that connection. But, the world wasn’t a merciful place. Castiel was falling, and Dean was scrambling to keep it together. 

Ten minutes later the clouds obscured the sun and the storm began. Lightning flaring from within the nimbus, lighting up the sky in reds and blues and purples. A spectacular display of power and ferocity, but Dean couldn’t make himself look, couldn’t do anything but grip the steering wheel and grind his teeth because the connection he had with the kid was fraying, flash by flash, thread by thread. 

Dean saw the horizon, the mountains and road illuminated monochrome between strikes and the tension of the demon at the back of his mind grew.

Castiel looked at him, drew his brows down; “Dean?”

And something clicked. Dean shook his head, “Son of a bitch… He’s following us. He—“ Dean slammed on the brakes, watched Bill continue to travel for another hundred, or two hundred feet before he stopped as well. Taillights lit up like glowing red eyes. 

Castiel put out a hand, fingers slotting against Dean’s right shoulder and the clouds, fat and dark as they were, could hold no more. Heavy drops the size of nickels hit the windshield and roof with audible cracks. One, two and then a thousand, a sudden deluge as Bill’s truck reversed and stopped by Castiel’s window. 

Dean rubbed his brow, teeth on edge, hands shaking as cold, acidic chills raced up and down his spine. 

“What’s happenin’!” Bill shouted to be heard over the rain.

Castiel cranked his window down and stuck his head out; “The demon’s moving—We’re not going to make it in time!”

Dean shook his head, dizzy, vision shrinking. He could feel each lightning bolt fanning out in the clouds over his head, could feel the demon stretching out its power, too vast for Dean to grip, too much—

He groped out blindly for Castiel and caught the angel’s hand, squeezed his fingers until Castiel squeezed back.

“Dean, let it go—Don’t follow it.”

He shook his head again, feeling in his limbs fading away; “We’ll lose it! There’s no—“

“We can find it again! DON’T FOLLOW IT! DON’T LET IT PULL YOU ALONG WITH IT!”

The demon knew. Dean understood in that second. As easily as he’d been able to feel its location, the demon could feel his, and it would continue to be able to as long as Dean held on to that connection. As long as he refused to let go. 

“It knows we’re going to find Sara—It knows!”

Castiel’s grace pushed into him, up his arm, into his head, through the fraying tendrils and toward the demon. He withdrew quickly—violently—“Let it go, Dean! It did this on purpose. It knows we can find it. It wanted you to leave—It did this to get a head start—“

Dean’s blood ran cold; “Those people—CAS! All those people!”

Castiel shook him, physically and otherwise; “It won’t go back. It knows that we could get to it in the mountains—It’s going to run. Let it go before it pulls your soul out with it!”

Dean bared his teeth, felt TK struggling wildly to get free. Felt the demon sinking proverbial claws into Dean’s mind, snarling in denial. It WANTED to pull Dean out. Knew he would be helpless and unable to catch the trail again. Dean snarled back—BURNED with the grace until the demon reacted and released before it could retaliate. 

And between one flash of lightning and the next the demon was gone. 

0-0-0

The storm lit up the greater portion of the state by midnight, and by one-am, it was moving north at a rapid pace. 

Bill grew quiet, face hardened, but his truck kept up, stayed two car lengths behind the Impala as they drove. 

Dean called Bobby. Spoke in a low shout to be heard over the rain. Said he needed every hunter they could get on this, keeping an eye on ANYTHING suspicious. “I don’t know if it’s gonna keep to the pattern or if it’s going to bulldoze everyone in its way.”

Bobby swallowed audibly; “I’ll do what I can—ain’t many of us left that don’t want you and your brother dead.” 

“Don’t I know it,” Dean rubbed nervous sweat from his upper lip; “Just do what you can… You got any weapons drops between here and there? If it keeps raining like this we’re gonna need a lot more salt.”

“I don’t—but I’ll call around. I think Rufus’ got a cabin up in Montana, if he hasn’t burned it down by now,” He muttered something to someone else in the room but Dean couldn’t make it out—Bobby’d probably covered the mouth piece of the phone with his hand.

Dean sighed; “Well, keep me posted. I don’t know what this thing is gonna do and until it makes a move we’re playing follow the leader.” 

“I’ll do what I can. You boys take care of yourselves.”

Dean ended the call and flexed his aching hands against the steering wheel. He glanced down at the gas gauge and tongued the backs of his teeth; “We’re gonna lose it… I’ve got about twelve miles left before we’ll be sucking fumes.”

Behind them Bill tapped his horn twice in distress and cut off onto the side of the road. Dean glanced in the mirror then did the same. He watched as Bill climbed out, vest tugged up over his head, and hefted a gas can from the bed of his truck. 

Dean cracked open the door against the rain and called out; “How much you got left in that thing?”

“Oh, ‘bout two gallons… you?” He tipped the nozzle into his tank. 

“Gas station anywhere near here?”

Bill nodded, “We’ll make it.”

Dean didn’t share his optimism. 

As if by magic, however, twelve miles came and went and the Impala kept going. 

Dean felt sweat rolling down the back of his neck, fearful that running the tank so low would damage the engine—worried that the needle may break off on the ‘E’.

Fifteen miles, still no slowing down. 

Twenty—

Thirty-five and Dean saw lights appear over the crest of a hill. A shitty little no-name gas station across the road from an equally shitty, no-name motor lodge. The electricity was still on, and he could see puddles in the road from the severity of the rain, but it wasn’t until Dean started to slow down that the Impala so much as hiccupped. Signal on, turning into the lane by one of the two lonely pumps, she made a soft wheeze of a noise and Dean almost bit through his lip. Muttering apologies and patting the dash as he pulled the keys from the ignition. 

Bill said nothing, but started filling his own tank, back turned to the wind. 

Castiel climbed out, Sputnik trailing along behind him. She shook herself and dust flew from her fur. She and the angel took up a stance in the empty space between the pumps and the store, under the leaky awning and seemed to mime one another through complicated looking stretches. 

Dean finished pumping and took a moment to swipe a squeegee across the windshield and back glass, then went inside to pay. 

There was a middle-aged woman behind the counter, and an equally middle aged man stocking the milk cooler. They were chatting through the open cooler door about the weather. That the National Weather Service had said it looked like a tornado might have gone through a few miles north. And do you think Mikey got that snake out of the storm shelter out back?

Dean snagged a couple bags of chips and a pack of bologna, then sidestepped Bill as he came into the store, scuffing his boots against the rug. Bill picked up a six-pack of beer, two packages of teriyaki beef jerky and asked for a pack of wraps—“The long ones—no the blue.” 

Dean pawed through a shaky rack of t-shirts and found a grey one with some screen-print scenic photo on the front, paid in cash and left. 

Castiel was standing in the rain trying to tug sputnik from under the awning so she could do her business, but the dog wasn’t moving, not at all. 

Dean rolled his eyes and approached with heavy footfalls. “She hates getting wet,” He emptied out the plastic sac and tore a hole in it then forced it over her head like a rain poncho. 

Sputnik looked up at him indignantly, as if betrayed, and Castiel tugged her off to the grass. 

Bill snorted where he was leaned up against the front bumper of his truck rolling what Dean dearly hoped was just a cigarette. 

Sputnik kicked her feet agitatedly when she was finished and politely pulled the lead right from Castiel’s hand to beat him back to Dean’s side. She shook, spraying water everywhere, snorted and hacked and kicked her back feet. 

Dean fished for a stolen motel towel from the trunk, crouched and growled back at her as he scrubbed her dry—towel coming back more muddy than wet. “Jesus, you need a bath—“ He lifted his arm and took a sniff; “I need a bath,” He tore open the bologna, rolled up a slice and fed it to her.

Castiel shuffled up, dripping, hair hanging into his eyes. Dean shook his head and shoved another towel into his arms, then handed him the t-shirt, “Come on.” 

As much as Dean’s arms and legs begged for rest, his mind couldn’t allow it. He cut back onto the road and continued north, trying to ignore Sputnik’s loud grooming from the back seat, or Castiel fidgeting against the towels beneath him and his wet pants. 

An hour later they found the town the ‘tornado’ had torn through. Dean saw windows shattered, roofs torn off, people milling about in the street screaming while EMT’s tried to calm them. 

A two-story house was on fire and Dean’s heart caught in his throat. One of the firemen was holding a wide-eyed, pale little boy with soot smears on his face. Nobody else was on the lawn. 

The police stopped them halfway through town, said the road was blocked—downed power lines, and Dean could smell the sulfur in the air. 

There was no hotel. There was no respite.

They made a wide, sprawling detour around the downed lines and Dean pulled to a stop under a fizzling streetlamp by the side of the road. 

The rain had stopped, and the storm was breaking apart over their heads. He could see stars.

Bill pulled to a stop and approached with a flashlight, stood there puffing on his smokes and asked what the plan was. 

Dean eyed the sky to the east and checked his watch. “It’s gone into hiding, or made for the Devil’s Gate,” He leaned back in his seat and stretched his legs as far as he could in the foot well. Felt aches and kinks in his back pulling tight, not quite enough to pop free. He turned to look at Castiel. “Do I have a chance of finding it with the demon radar if I’m not—”

The air became static, chilled—Dean turned with his teeth grit and saw it happen. It wasn’t like watching an angel zap in and out, the reaper seemed to appear out of a shadow, not quite solid, and for a moment Dean could see its wings, fanned forward and sweeping back.

Bill turned, flashlight lifting, hand going for his knife. “’the hell!”

Dean stared at him for a moment, taking in the dark suit and black overcoat. He didn’t look old or wrinkly like some reapers. Truthfully, he looked like some average Joe, older than Dean, but not old enough to have that salt-and-peppered thing going on. Dean’s eyes caught on the glint of a silver chain hanging from the middle button of the reaper’s waistcoat. He checked the time on it and lifted a slim, somewhat pointed nose, brown eyes distant; “Have to say, you’re not what I was expecting.”

The reaper had a slight accent, pretentious, North East sophistication layered over something otherworldly that made Dean think of volcanoes and Greeks in togas. Dean snorted and popped open his door, nudging Bill back where the man was still brandishing his knife. He eyed the reaper disinterestedly; “Yeah, same here…” He gestured back toward the town and the plume of smoke rising from the still burning house. “You working tonight?”

“I was elected to come and find out who you were,” The reaper said. His tone was low, measured. Dean felt it break over him, searching tendrils of what he didn’t know. His brain was buzzing. 

Dean motioned over his shoulder; “I’m Dean, that’s Cas, and that’s Bill.”

“Obviously. There aren’t many people traveling around with angels these days. Though this—” He motioned to Dean’s chest, “Is a little more exciting than what the others expected,” The reaper eyed him, squinted and took a step back to circle, like a vulture, as if he didn’t quite know what to make of Dean and thought, perhaps, he might taste good with ketchup. “Tell me,” He paused at Dean’s back and leaned in a little, spoke quietly, “Are you responsible for that… THING that came through?”

Castiel climbed out of the car, eyes locked warningly on the reaper’s, “The demon escaped when Alistair opened the devil’s gate. It wasn’t Dean’s doing.”

“And that’s supposed to comfort me?” He turned a cold, calculating eye on the angel; “You’re not the only ones looking to sway or capture it.”

Castiel’s jaw tightened; “Other angels.”

The reaper only gazed at him, “Try again.”

Dean glanced at Castiel questioningly, found no comfort in the pinch of the angel’s lips, or the crease between his brows. “Demons? There are other demons after this thing? Why?”

The reaper spoke clearly, glanced at his watch again, compulsively—or so Dean thought—“So many souls just sitting there in that thing’s belly,” He leaned in close to Dean again, spoke more to the back of his shoulder than anything, “There is something special about a human soul, Winchester… So much untapped power. All a demon has to do to access it is crack the shell,” He snapped the watch closed and put it away. 

Dean could feel the chilled static breeze of the reaper’s presence and gave a little shudder; “How many people did it kill?” 

Castiel crossed his arms over his chest. He looked far less intimidating without his jacket and coat, but the aura was still there. 

The reaper inhaled deeply and Dean saw its inverted wings flutter, crack open a little at that seam in its chest; “It devoured sixteen souls, two of which were unborn.”

Castiel’s fists tightened and he turned his face away. 

“That puts the count at over four-hundred fifty.”

Bill raised his voice, something like fear pulling his vowels high and sharp; “Anybody wanna tell me what’s goin’ on?” He motioned to the reaper with the point of his knife; “Did you say ‘angel’?”

Dean turned with a sigh; “Cas got kicked out of the choir, he hangs with me now. That’s about it. You all caught up?”

Bill blinked at Castiel slowly, chin lowered to his chest; “Angel… You—“ He shook his head, “Well, what the hell is he!” He motioned to the reaper.

“One of Death’s children,” Castiel said, without missing a beat. “A Reaper.”

Bill blinked quickly, dazed, and fumbled for another cigarette wrapper. “I am too sober for this.” 

The reaper snorted; “Aren’t we all,” He shuffled forward, hand in his pocket, cradling his watch, and made a gesture at his lips with two fingers; “Share?”

Bill looked at him, disturbed. His voice shook; “Grim Reapers smoke?”

The reaper snorted; “What’s it going to do? Kill me?”

Bill flicked his eyes up and down and passed his smoke over; “Knock yourself out! I just quit,” He wiped his hands on his vest and turned back to Dean; “Anything else you wanna tell me?”

Dean worked his tongue at his teeth; “I’m not psychic… I’ve just got some weird ass angelic superglue holding my shiny bits together.” 

“Oh,” Bill said, tone low, almost neutral. Dean couldn’t tell if the older man was just that disturbed, or if he just really didn’t give a shit; “Good to know.”

“Lets me do this,” Dean put his hand on the light post and the bulb over their heads buzzed loudly, then burst. “Not really that useful, but I’m great at parties.” 

Bill snorted in the darkness; “You’re just a crackerjack, you know that?”

“Barrel full of fucking laughs,” The reaper muttered.

0-0-0

Demons, as a whole, don’t really have a code of honor. In some ways, their hierarchy is a lot like high school. There are the loud mouths that are more talk than action. The ones who are all action and no brains— In fact, most demons are loud mouths. More talk than actual technique, or so the Old Ones will say. The ones you really have to look out for are the quiet ones. The ones who know how to keep a secret and push a con for the long haul. The ones you have to look out for, are the ones who bring you the fresh meat. 

Yeah, okay, some souls come to hell just because they were all mean and nasty on the fleshy plane. But most of them show up at the rusty gates because of Crossroads demons. 

Crossroads demons are the ones you don’t want to cross, pun intended. They can make existence miserable for even the Old Ones. The White eyes and the Fallen alike, because unlike their cousins, crossroads demons do have a code of honor, ETHICS, if you will. 

Over the millennia, they’ve not only become ruthless, they’ve become cunning. Some would say lazy, but others… Others would call them genius. 

A crossroads demon, or Soul Broker, if you will, becomes more powerful with each soul they brand, just as a regular demon becomes more powerful the more souls it breaks. That’s how it works—the kiss isn’t just for show. The fastest way to a human’s soul, is through the mouth. Through their life’s breath. 

Now, Crowley’s been around for a long time. He’s good at his job, isn’t afraid to lie, cheat and even sully his forked tongue with the truth on occasion. But he’s not stupid. He’s not the type of demon to pass up a golden opportunity, even if the payout isn’t instantaneous. 

There are already other demons after the Crawling One when Crowley decides to toss his hat into the ring. But they’re all hunting the thing as if it were a human. Intent on forcing it to obey. Crowley, however, knows that you gain loyalty just as easily with bribery and trickery than with force. And bribery takes so much less of an effort. Why would you want to waste energy on capturing and torturing the damned thing, when he could get it to willingly and gleefully give up the souls it’s gorged itself on?

“Have you heard the story of the golden goose?” Crowley said peering down at the ruined town from the mountains.

The Other snorted; “I didn’t come here for an English lecture.”

He continued on undeterred. “A farmer and his wife discover their goose has the power to lay eggs made of solid gold. Being ignorant bastards, they eventually get curious as to where the gold is coming from. So, they decide that the damned thing must be all gold inside and it would just be wonderful to have all that gold now,” Crowley turned and regarded the other, “The gist of it is—when a fat stupid animal gives you something priceless, you don’t cut it open to see where it’s coming from. You wait, fatten it with all the tastiest morsels, sit back, and let it do all the work, then it will shit gold for you until the apocalypse.”

“Just taking the souls away sounds infinitely easier.”

Crowley’s eyes rolled back into his head, “Don’t they teach you reapers any patience? Just swooping in and taking what it’s got might work once—maybe twice, depending on how stupid it is—but soon enough it would learn to run the other way when Crowley came calling… Gaining its loyalty ensures I’m up to my throat in souls until the angels or Winchesters manage to kill it. And I don’t doubt that they will. The trick is to get as many payloads as possible before that happens… Which is where you come in.”

“What makes you think I’d be willing to let a demon have those souls?”

He turned with a heavy lidded, slow grin; “Because you were left out in the cold just as we were. Condemned for something you had no control over. Because I understand how difficult it is—what a thankless job you’ve been saddled with. I know what it’s like to live with the weight of humanity’s hatred.”

The reaper didn’t seem convinced.

Crowley made a rolling gesture with one hand; “There was a time, if I’m not mistaken, when Death and all his reapers lived in heaven… But now you’re not even welcome at the gates. I wonder why that is.” 

“It’s none of your concern.”

“Oh, but it is… What did Death do that made the asshole upstairs throw him out?”

The reaper stared at him, eyes narrowed, inverted wings trembling.

“Nothing so heinous as voicing an opinion I hope. I’m here, right now, because the great and powerful windbag couldn’t stand hearing the word ‘no’,” Crowley stepped closer, gentle and sympathetic. “I wonder what your daddy did to get you tossed out on your ears.”

The reaper’s wings flicked nervously. 

“It’s quite simple, all I want you to do is take him out, show him a good time. Dinner, dancing, nightcap. Then bring him home and we’ll explore what he’s keeping under that coat.”

“You make it sound easy. If it were that simple why hasn’t someone tried it since it escaped?”

“They want all the souls at once… They’re greedy—I, however, am patient. The Creepy-Crawlies need structure or they just eat themselves to death. But this one is notoriously slippery. Fancies he’s got himself a brain… It’s our responsibility to give him what he really needs.”

“Structure?”

“An escape hatch. I’ve been tracking this bugger for two years now, and after every feeding he goes back, tries to claw his way into hell through the devil’s gate. He wants to go home, he’s just too stupid to know how… Pretty soon, he’s going to have too many souls in one place and management will be alerted. He doesn’t want that—nobody wants that. But he’s just too STUPID to stop eating! So, we give him what the others aren’t thinking. We give him somewhere to put those souls, a few at a time, where no one will find them and he can go back to the buffet.” 

The reaper blinked slowly, in realization.

“I want someone who can take those souls right where I want them. Or, in case of emergency—take him home where the Winchesters and their broken angel can’t find him,” Crowley motioned with the tilt of his chin, fingertips pressed delicately together. 

“And what do I get out of this?”

Crowley hesitated, then with a disgruntled sigh, put a hand into the inner pocket of his jacket and withdrew a scrap of stained linen bound around something roughly six or eight inches long and thin like a pencil, tied snugly with bits of what could have been dried flesh. He sat it innocently on a stone between himself and the reaper then leaned over it protectively. “I’d show you, but I think we both know what happens if I open it.”

The reaper’s eyes locked on it, knew instinctually what it was and the seam in its chest gapped open, wings tilted in excitement.

Crowley’s face twisted into a grin beneath his stolen host’s; “And this leads ineffably to the big question… Do we have a deal?” 

The reaper strode forward without hesitation, and took the bundle, tucked it away and leveled its gaze at Crowley; “Where do I start.” 

0-0-0

“Dean… Dean, it itches—“

“It’s a fucking sunburn, of course it itches,” Dean gave his head a shake, reached for his coffee cup and found it dry moments after the plastic lid touched his lips. “Wait until it starts peeling.”

Castiel rubbed his fingertips against the reddened crest of one cheekbone. “This is disgusting.”

“Well, next time we’ll remember the Coppertone,” Dean hadn’t slept in three days. Not any more than thirty or forty stolen minutes on the side of the road so he wouldn’t have to surrender his keys and the comfortable groove his ass had worn in the Impala’s driver’s seat to Castiel. 

There were some things that Dean just didn’t want to do, so he wasn’t going to do it. 

So far the demon hadn’t returned to its pattern. If anything it was attacking with more fervor. Snatching one, maybe two members of a family and leaving the rest alone without so much as a scratch. If Dean didn’t know better—if he wasn’t able to touch that connection with the demon, Castiel there with a hand on his head, to sever it again too fast for the thing to react and reach back at him—he would have said that it was a completely different demon. 

Three nights—thirty-two souls, on top of the sixteen it had taken the first night of its flight. 

Castiel had become quiet, focus honed to a razor’s edge. Dean could easily see some of that Holy Warrior like this. Could feel it in the brutal SNAP of the link between himself and the demon when Castiel severed it. It left Dean’s mind feeling raw for hours afterward, weary like his muscles after a hard run or a night spent digging up graves with a dull shovel. 

Dean was TIRED, he was tired and he worried what would happen if that creeping exhaustion was the final straw and this marathon of days without any adverse sign, or alert from Sputnik, would come to an abrupt end with the Impala in a ditch and Dean bleeding out while his brain exploded. 

Bill didn’t seem to be doing much better. The older man had developed shakes from lack of nicotine, he’d become cranky and damned near intolerable to be around. Dean kind of wanted to slap nicotine patches over his mouth but he was pretty sure Bill was a biter from how he bared and gnashed his teeth over every meal. 

The demon though, didn’t actually give a shit what condition its pursuers were in, if anything it hoped they would burn up to nothing and die. But, life was a bitch like that, sometimes Demons didn’t get what they wanted and humans didn’t spontaneously combust. 

They were close—or that’s what Dean kept telling himself. Had to keep telling himself because admitting they were trying to play catch-up with this thing was painful. 

Bill came out of the police station with a stack of papers. He slid into the back seat of the Impala with Sputnik and handed the papers forward; “They’re callin’ in the Feds… Nation Wide Man-hunt kind of business,” he rubbed his face tiredly; “This is exactly what we didn’t want.” 

“Yeah, well, whose fault is that?” Dean muttered waspishly and turned the car back onto the road.

Bill turned his face to the window and said nothing, but his gaze was dark, hands curled into fists. 

Castiel continued to rub his sunburn. 

“Well, don’t everybody start shouting at once!” Dean drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, “What CAN we do about this?”

Castiel looked out the window; “We can wait until it begins to attack and I can move us to its position—“

“And it’ll take off again!” Dean snarled. “Besides, I thought your mojo was acting up so you were sticking around to recharge.”

Castiel turned away, hands curling close to his body.

“If we knew its name we could summon it,” Bill put in hopefully. 

Dean rubbed his brow. 

“That would require Dean to delve too deeply into the demon’s mind. He isn’t strong enough to withstand it—“

“I can take it—“

“No,” Castiel said fatalistically; “You can’t. You do not have as much control over the grace as you believe you do. One slip and the demon could reach back. It would not hesitate to damage you in any way possible, just because it can.” 

“Well, we’ve gotta do something It’s killed thirty-two people. Thirty-two people that shouldn’t have had to die. You can keep it from getting too close, you pulled me back before—“

“I don’t think you really understand what you’re asking me to do.”

“I’m asking you to keep a demon out of my head.”

“While you’re inviting it in.”

Bill worked his tongue at his teeth; “Maybe Dean wouldn’t have to look at all… You said you can track this thing by tracking the souls it’s swallowed? What if one of the people already inside this thing could figure out its name.”

“Seeing as TK is the only one we can communicate with, it would require a feat of endurance and strength I truly doubt a fifteen-year-old boy is capable of.”

Bill jogged a shoulder toward his ear; “It’s worth a shot… Better than chasing this thing without any kind of plan.”

Dean glanced up at road signs flipping past, looking for anything advertising lunch specials and fresh coffee. He swung through the drive-through of some shitty chain restaurant and wound up with some sort of ‘Café Lux’ bullshit that tasted like someone had dumped a handful of candy corn in it. He cursed but drank it anyway because he needed something to keep him going. 

Bill offered a single-serve sleeve of Sanka from one of his innumerable vest pockets but Dean declined, focused instead on the road. 

“Just be careful, yanno?” Bill said around a mouthful of burger; “’don’t want ya’ gettin kidney stones from all the coffee—That happened to me once. Not something I feel like repeating,” He slashed a hand through the air and gave Sputnik part of his bun.

“Hey!” Dean said, spying Bill in the rear view mirror; “There’d better not be cheese on that. She’s lactose intolerant.” 

Bill nodded; “Good to know.”

Dean tried to choke down as much of the coffee as he could but wound up tossing the cup out the window about two blocks from their hotel because the sweet aftertaste was becoming nauseating. Settled on stealing Castiel’s fries between bites of burger. 

There were fresh sheets on the bed and little chocolates on the pillows when they got back to the hotel. Dean found this strangely comforting and stuck his in a pocket of his duffle to save until later. He understood the necessity of truckstop motels, and on some level felt safer in them, but the clean sheets and candy bars in a basket on the mini-fridge were good distractions. He took a seat on his bed and called Bobby, relayed Bill’s suggestion—pleading with TK to investigate the demon that had killed him. 

Bobby admitted that it sounded like a long-shot, but easier than sniffing out a psychic. “I would have just called Pam, but—“ Bobby cleared his throat. “Well, some things can’t be helped.”

Dean picked at a fray in his jeans; “What if I did it?”

“Did what? Tried to be psychic?” He sounded amused. “Or tried to call Pam?”

“Tried to call Pam.”

“She’d bounce your brain off the sidewalk… She ain’t gonna help and you’d be lucky if she didn’t call the feds on you.” 

“Well, what if I tried to get the demon to come to me?”

“How?”

“What if I grabbed it, yanno—grabbed it and pulled it to me.” 

Castiel looked up from where he’d been perusing the assortment of candy; “You would exhaust yourself and still fail… Then the demon would likely come and kill you.”

Bobby grunted; “What’d he say?”

“Basically what I thought he’d say.”

“Which is?”

“’No’.”

“Ah,” Bobby nodded, Dean could hear the scuff of his facial hair on the mouthpiece of the phone; “Well, I agree with him if anybody wants my opinion.”

Something made a noise on Bobby’s end of the phone, likely a slammed door and the older man turned his attention to whomever had just entered the room. 

“Where the hell have you been! Your Ma’ma’s been goin’ nuts!”

Jo, it seemed, shrugged off the concern.

“And where’d Sam roll off to?”

Dean’s jaw tightened; “Wait, Sam’s gone? Where is he?”

Bobby wasn’t listening. “A date? You playing chauffeur?”

Dean felt his brain start to buzz; “Sam’s on a date? With who? Since when is he dating!” 

Bobby let out an exasperated huff and snapped in Dean’s ear; “I’m tryin’ to figure that out, cut me some slack!” He turned back to Jo, his voice muffled over the line; “A barber? He’s gettin’ his hair cut?”

Dean snorted; “About time!”

“He’s having dinner WITH the barber—“ Bobby lowered his voice; “—Not my place to judge, but… Ain’t he a little old for Sam?”

Dean felt himself grin; “There’s a lady barber,” He covered the mouthpiece of the phone and turned to Cas with a smile; “Sammy’s on a date with a barber!”

“Barber’s daughter is a barber too… A support group?” Bobby said with a distinct sneer in his voice; “What kind of date is that!”

“It’s not a date!” Jo said loud enough that Dean could hear her. 

Dean felt his shoulders deflate. Damn. “Sammy’s goin’ to a support group?”

“Apparently,” Bobby said, voice pulled tight. “First I’ve heard of it.”

Dean felt uneasy at the very idea of it, but this is what he’d wanted, right? He’d wanted Sam to get better—he’d wanted himself to get better, and this was how Sam was working toward that. “So—uh—back to the demon, I guess… You got any super powered traps?”

Bobby sighed; “I’ll see if I can cook something up… Ask Castiel, millennia old angel should have a few tricks up his toga.” 

Dean choked on a laugh, “Yeah, I think he’s more interested in the Clark Bars right now.” 

“Nothin’ wrong with Clark Bars.” 

“Okay, just see what you can come up with, I’ll ask Cas when he’s done licking the chocolate off his face.”

“Uh-huh… Just keep me posted.”

Contacting TK wasn’t as climactic as one would think. The kid was scared shitless and hurting in the demon’s belly, most of the time he just struggled and tried to claw at Dean’s mind in a futile, unconscious bid for freedom. 

Dean didn’t like doing it. It reminded him too keenly of every soul he’d come into contact with in Hell. Reminded him too keenly of himself and the unfairness of his rescue. Truthfully, he didn’t want to ask TK to do it. He was afraid to. Afraid to see what state the souls would be in when they got them out. Afraid they would be able to see the damage in him as easily as he would be able to see it in them. 

Dean’s hands shook, “Hey… Cas, what kind of trap or spell are we going to need to trap this thing once we’ve got it?”

Castiel looked up from his chocolate; “Old Enochian… It will require a few spell components. White ash from the burned wood of a thousand-year-old Jerusalem pine, blessed salt from the Dead Sea, Holy oil, water from a holy place, and rose hips.” 

Dean blinked at him slowly; “Rose hips?”

Castiel nodded. “The ingredients are crushed together to create a paint that is used to outline the seal intended to hold the demon in place,” He narrowed his eyes, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I just think this is the first spell I’ve come across that actually calls for rose hips… I think I owe Bobby an apology,” He rubbed his brow; “Any particular type of rose hips?”

“Large ones.” 

“Smartass.” 

Castiel approached, expression serious and took a seat across from Dean, knees brushing in the space between the beds. “We should begin, there’s no telling how long it will take.”

Dean opened his mouth, intent on protesting, but closed it, fisted his hands on his knees and nodded. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right.”

“Something’s troubling you.”

Dean shook his head; “No, I’m fine.”

“If you’re unwell—“

“I’m fine.” 

“Is this about Sam?”

Dean rolled his eyes and scrubbed his fingertips against his mouth; “It’s not about Sam. It’s me, OK? I just—It’s creepy… being able to go soul surfing like this is creepy.”

“You’re shaking.”

Dean pushed himself up and took a few steps away, physically shook out his limbs. “I’m good—I’m good, let’s do this!” He returned to the bed and sat, teeth grit, nails biting into his kneecaps. He met Castiel’s eyes and didn’t blink. 

Castiel stared right back at him. 

From across the room Sputnik pawed Dean’s bag open and pulled out one of his dirty t-shirts. 

Dean launched himself up again; “Don’t DO that! Don’t LOOK at me with—with your EYES!”

Castiel seemed both confused and disturbed.

Dean paced back and forth, scratched his hair away from his brow and rocked side to side on his feet nervously. His skin was tingling.

“Is there another way to look at you without using—“

“No,” Dean groaned and threw himself back at the bed, sprawled on his back and shoved a hand in Castiel’s direction. “Let’s get this over with.” 

“Your enthusiasm is infectious,” Castiel took his arm, pressed two fingers to his pulse point and focused on the twitch of muscle in his palm. 

“What are you doing?”

“You’re behaving erratically.”

“It’s the coffee,” Dean fidgeted, “Can we please just get this over with?”

Castiel sighed and the grip on Dean’s arm changed, grace feeding in between his cells. 

It was like the Warp effect on Star Trek. Or maybe like Space Balls, Dean wasn’t exactly sure, just knew that it was mind melting. Talk about an out-of-body-experience. Castiel didn’t give him much time to adjust, didn’t let him pull back on his own, they didn’t have that luxury. He just grabbed Dean’s consciousness and thrust him up into the ether like a periscope. 

The city around them was busy. All aglitter with souls and activity. To Dean it felt like fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes of searching before he found the familiar spark of TK’s soul. As soon as he was within range the kid had locked onto him again, all fear and anger and confusion. 

However, TK wasn’t mindless. When Dean tried to talk to him—shouted really, because he didn’t know how this worked—the boy backed off a little. 

It wasn’t words—more like emotions without a filter. What TK felt, Dean felt and it was more disorientating that he thought it would be. Like seeing the flashing lights of a police cruiser through the curtains, or hearing music from another room. 

TK couldn’t touch him, not really, but the impressions of him were still there. 

Dean felt like he was communicating through a wall and vaguely imagined himself as a toddler, pressing his ear to his mother’s pregnant stomach and talking to Sam. Only instead of something happy, as that had been—this was terrifying. 

This demon—Dean said, tried to translate it to feelings, tried to open himself up to the kid hoping there were words in there more than desperation and pain—This demon has a name. Do you know it?

TK writhed, banged against the barrier between them, then seemed to still, focus and—I don’t know its name. The others never call it by its name.

Dean ached from holding the connection open so far, but he persisted; I need its name. If we have its name we can get you out!

The boy bounced around excitedly in terror and relief; Where is its name?

Dean got impressions of underwear with a name written on the waistband, and tags pinned to shirts. 

In its head. Listen—LISTEN! Demons aren’t like people, it doesn’t have parts like a person does, it’s just a broken soul, OK? You can get to its mind if you look hard enough—

Castiel’s intent pushed forward in warning, his voice ringing in Dean’s head and through the connection like a fog horn; DO NOT SYMPATHIZE WITH IT! DO NOT ALIGN YOURSELF WITH ITS DESIRES OR IT WILL DESTROY YOU! YOU CANNOT ALLOW IT TO OVERCOME YOU! THERE ARE SO MANY SOULS WITHIN IT AT THIS MOMENT YOU CAN HIDE IF IT DISCOVERS YOUR INTENT. DO NOT ALLOW IT TO CATCH YOU!

Dean’s mind and body reeled as Castiel withdrew, but he maintained the contact, forced himself up from the encroaching gray haze to speak to TK again; See if you can find people you know to help. It isn’t going to be easy but you can do it! All we need is its name and you’re free!

0-0-0

Bill woke to a fist pounding on his hotel room door. He hadn’t been asleep long, it wasn’t even time for Judge Judy yet. He scrubbed his eyes and padded to the door expecting the cops. Instead there was the angel. His face was blotchy from the sunburn but there was a definite pallor around his mouth. 

“What?” Bill butted his head against the door jamb.

The angel hesitated, breathed in and the air caught—held—and released in an urgent hiss; “Dean is in pain. I can’t stop it.” 

He found Dean lying curled in the bathroom floor with his arms around his head and a wet towel across the back of his neck. “You havin’ a fit?” Bill said softly.

Dean didn’t so much as move. 

Bill turned to the angel; “This some sort of convulsion?”

“No… I—I pushed him too far contacting TK.”

Bill nodded solemnly, “Migraine.”

Dean muttered weakly from the floor; “Understatement.” 

“You not got anything to knock it out?”

Dean didn’t answer so Bill walked away, found Dean’s med kit upended over the far bed. He pawed through the scattered bottles and packets, started opening them and peering in at the contents; “Perc’ not workin’?”

Castiel peered down at Dean then back to Bill with a shake of his head; “He’s been like this for more than an hour, none of the medications have worked—I—“ His hands lifted, fingers laced together at his chest, bent slowly—inexorably backward as if to punish himself—“It’s my fault.”

Bill stared, vision cleared as if for the first time. The tension in Castiel’s brow, the hunch of his shoulders—how his toes curled into the carpet through his threadbare socks. “Damn it, it ain’t your fault.” 

“If I hadn’t pushed—“

“Woulda’coulda’shoulda’… You did, now you gotta deal with it. He ain’t mad at you over it, are you Winchester?”

Dean didn’t reply, but the tension in the air wasn’t in any way malicious so Bill motioned with an open bottle of pills; “See! He’ll live,” He put the lid back on and reached for another; “Angel juice not work on migraines?”

Castiel looked at his feet; “My ‘juice’ has been unpredictable of late.”

Bill grunted, “You tried a back rub? Hell, half the headaches I’ve had have been because of tension.”

Castiel seemed to contemplate this seriously for a moment then took a step into the bathroom; “Dean?”

He sighed, shoulders buyunching as he peered out from between his arms; “At this point, I’m willing to try just about anything.” 

Bill scooped Dean’s medicines back into his case and sat it aside; “If the backrub don’t work I can swing back by the burger place and ask the kid in the drive-thru for a dime.” 

Dean exhaled and pushed himself up, head sagging between his knees. Castiel hovered at his shoulder, afraid to touch while Dean levered himself to his feet, eyes closed, fingers at hip height following the plane of the wall to his bed. 

“Want me to do it?” Bill said, voice just a little too casual. 

Dean peered out at him with one bloodshot eye. “Not particularly.”

Bill nodded, hands up, relief written plainly on his face. “Fair enough,” He swung his hands and glanced up into the corners of the room, shuffling toward the door. “I’ll be preemptive and go see the kid about the dime.”

Castiel watched him go, brow scrunched and once the door had clicked shut he turned his attention to Dean; “What’s the significance of a dime? There are two in your pants pocket.”

Dean rubbed the sweat from his face; “Dime bag… It—“ He sighed, “Nevermind.”

“Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m unfamiliar—I don’t know how to do a backrub.”

“Tha’sall right… You—you just do this,” He pressed his fingertips to the quilt and moved his hand in circular motions. “But, yanno…” He shrugged his shoulders minutely for emphasis. 

“And that will help?”

“I got no clue… I usually just try to sleep. Last time I asked Sam for a backrub it felt like he was tryin’ to poke his thumbs through my shoulder blades.”

“That’s not possible under normal parameters,” Castiel’s hand landed on his back, a little firmer than he would have liked, fingers spaced evenly, matching the circular pattern Dean had created on the blanket. “Is this helping?”

Not really. It did next to nothing for his headache, but the contact. He bowed forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. “Yeah. Yeah, that helps.”

Castiel didn’t stop, or hesitate at all, but his posture changed, his head tilting in the opposite direction. It happened slowly, so slowly Dean didn’t at first realize something was changing until he felt the angel’s other hand swipe a mirroring path across his shoulder blade and the full breadth of Castiel’s wide palm pressed into the base of his neck.

Dean shivered, could feel the warm brush of intent in each touch. The gentling and shift of pressure until Castiel was tracing each muscle structure of his shoulders and neck and Dean found his head butted against the angel’s abdomen, head enveloped with the scent of him. Soap and laundry detergent and the melting candy in his pants pocket. 

There were hands in hair. Pushing back from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck and down. Fingers kneading in to every knot and twist and bunch of muscle.

Castiel was speaking under his breath, nothing Dean had ever heard before, but the cadence was soothing, it felt warm against the edges of his mind and the cold fire of pain began to recede from the depths of his skull to the skin and muscle outside it. 

Dean didn’t know what was happening until he was waking up. He still felt like shit, not that he expected to feel refreshed after five hours in a migraine coma. But, the headache had receded to a manageable level, something he knew the Percocet would wipe away.

Dean vaguely remembered Castiel’s fingers pushing through his hair, listening to the air move in and out of the angel’s stolen lungs. Feeling, more than hearing the low rumble of his voice urging Dean to lie down, quiet—The weight of the angel sitting on the side of the bed. The pinched, worried look on his face and even though Dean was sure he’d been asleep or unconscious or whatever, on some level, he’d been able to feelSEEHEAR it. He’d been plagued by scattered, nonsensical dreams of barren icy tundra and stone crumbling under the pressure of his gazeTOUCHHANDSGRACE. Plants and forests growing at high speed only to die, fall and decay. Low cries like whale song echoing between stars in a brilliant primordial sky, stars falling into the sea—the world vanishing in a flash of brightness. 

Dean opened his eyes feeling dazed and not quite at home in his skin, covered in a fine layer of sweat and shivering beneath his blanket. 

Castiel was in front of him, lying on his face, eyes closed, lips parted. He wheezed in his sleep—and Bill was across the room pouring scotch into his coffee. 

Bill met Dean’s eyes when they peeled open and bobbed his chin in greeting, voice low; “We still got an hour or two before sundown. There’s a freak storm gathering right over us.”

“You think it’s our guy?”

Bill nodded; “I think it’s our guy.” 

“Where’re my pants?”

Bill’s head shook, “We got time before sunset. Take another pill and lay down, I’m keepin’ watch,” He motioned to the corner of the room where he’d set up his bulky looking laptop. “Got my eye on the weather, and the police scanner.”

Dean levered himself up on one shaking elbow and downed a pair of hydrocodone, decided to start small, besides, if he was lucky he wouldn’t need anymore. He settled down again, pulled one of the extra pillows over the top of his head to shield his eyes. “Hey, Bill?”

“Hmm?”

“D’joo get anything from the kid in the drive-thru?”

“Yeah. You need—“

“No, just—Don’t let Cas get it. I don’t—Promise me you won’t let him get it.” 

Bill stared at him evenly; “Reapers smokin’ Camels and Angels hittin’ gravity bongs? Is this some weird dream?”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I!” Bill sighed but nodded; “Alright. I ain’t gonna ask, but I won’t let him get hold of it.”

0-0-0

Dean didn’t get any more sleep. He dozed, heard Bill’s keyboard clicking and Castiel breathing and felt the storm building outside. He got up about an hour later, because lying there was agonizing, and gulped down a bottle of water. Pulled his pants and boots back on, and took Sputnik across the street to do her business. 

The storm was somehow magnificent. Large enough that it took up most of the sky, mushroom shaped with a flat top and rippling, dark innards. It seemed to move in waves, like an eel and Dean could feel the dark energy about it, now that he was outside the room, wondered what kind of warding Castiel had put up without Dean’s knowledge. 

Sputnik dug up some grass roots and ate them, then coughed them back up in the parking lot on their way back inside. Dean thought it was disgusting.

Castiel was waiting when they came back inside, face pinched in regret and urgency. Dean looked at him and knew, felt the apology and insistence and wanted to snap and brush it off, wanted to be spiteful and angry, but he couldn’t. He knew it was the only way, even if he didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to jump back in to mind meld with the dead kid. If they wanted even a chance of catching this demon, they had to. 

“Just—“ Dean held up his hand plaintively; “Let me do it, I think you butting in last time is what made it so rough.”

Castiel stared at him, but after a moment nodded, kept Dean’s hand tight in his own and just observed.

It took close to ten minutes for Dean to pull back enough to even start looking for the kid amid the Van Gogh painting of souls the city resembled. 

He hadn’t really had time to look before, Castiel always pulled him around like a dog on a leash. Didn’t give him the chance to SEE people. It felt like looking at one of those ‘Where’s Waldo’ books, but while staring at the crowd Dean could look at someone and KNOW things about them. Not much, but it reminded him of being able to read someone in a bar, pick out easy marks for pool games or which lush would be easier to scam for their ATM card. 

It was suddenly finding a strange demon that startled him. Just some crossroads demon in a bar sipping a gin and tonic. The demon seemed to sense him, it writhed in its host and snarled into the corners as Dean’s awareness passed over it. When Dean managed to turn around to go back and find out the address, the demon—and its host—were gone, leaving behind nothing but the phantom stink of brimstone and musky cologne. 

FOCUS, Castiel whispered through him. WE CAN WORRY ABOUT THAT ONE LATER.

Dean shook himself and continued on. 

It felt like forever before he found the boy. TK reached out at him even before Dean had settled into making the bridge. 

The kid was frantic, practically vibrating, throwing thoughts and ideas and images at Dean like bullets. 

He’s gone! He was here, now he’s gone! He’s GONE!

Dean pushed his voice forward, felt himself speaking in a slur through his body; Gone? Who? Who is gone!

TK’s soul lit up sour with fear, green and yellow and brown in his terror; My dad! My dad is gone!

What do you mean gone? He can’t be gone, there’s nowhere for him to go!

He’s GONE! I’ve counted everyone! He isn’t here! He was here yesterday and now he isn’t! HE’S GONE!

Dean pulled back, felt TK clinging to him tenaciously and clung back. Forced his body to make noise, his tongue to move and his voice to speak; “Kid says his dad’s gone. Like—like GONE.”

Castiel’s hand tightened on his own. “He has to be mistaken.”

Dean relayed the message, tried to soothe the kid but TK wouldn’t listen, scratched and pulled until Dean became aware of the other souls trapped in the belly of the demon—Became aware of a strange contentment radiating from the demon itself. 

Dean knew instantly that something was wrong. Something had changed.

Cas.

CAS

“Cas!” His body shuddered, “Cas, they’re gone… S-some of the people are gone.”

Lightning crashed overhead and the lights in the motel room flickered—dimmed—and went out. The world around Dean’s body felt muted and thick, like he was under water, moving at slow motion. Something shook the bed, hard.

Castiel’s grace lit up—like the aurora, pink and purple and green and blue—fanned out behind him like liquid starlight.

There was wind in the room, flashes of light—Dean hit the floor hard and came back to himself with a violent pull of air into his empty chest. The room was in chaos.

Bill’s computer was lying broken by the door and the desk was overturned. Sputnik was standing at Dean’s hip, hackles up, mouth open wide, tiny sharp teeth exposed between rolled up lips, eyes glinting in the electric flashes—She was snarling and barking threateningly, like a mad thing and Dean saw the hotel room window was gone—curtains shredded and fluttering, rain flying in as if gravity had turned itself ninety- degrees.

Castiel was between Dean and the broken window, blade drawn and glowing. He appeared too small against the storm raging outside, as if it may suck him up and blow him away to OZ or something. In his head Dean heard the theme for the wicked witch and the flying monkeys. For a moment, as he reorientated himself with his body and the room, Dean didn’t know what was happening, had a tornado ripped through unannounced? Had Zechariah found him? Had Lucifer found him?

A lamp post from the parking lot had crashed through the wall—and standing there where the desk had been only moments ago was a man. 

He was tall, easily as tall as Sam, thin with long bony fingers. He was wearing a long black coat that hung about his shoulders more like wet sagging flesh than cloth. When he lifted his head Dean saw a face—smooth and fine featured, grinning pleasantly like a congenial clerk at the grocery store. Broad and sincere but it didn’t reach his eyes. They flashed orange like flame in every shock of light from the storm. 

Dean saw both man and monster in that instant, images transposed over one another, flashing back and forth so quickly he couldn’t be sure if he was seeing one or the other. 

The demon tilted his face up into the wind, head shining and hairless one instant, and crowned with a thorny tangle of horns the next, face always grinning—placid and horrible and secretly hungry. It only vaguely resembled the other spider demons. This one was larger, somehow more twisted and regal, with some kind of burning pride in its eyes. Eyes… Yes, four of them, lidless and alight, like fire through bottle bottoms. 

Dean’s first thought was of this thing’s siblings coming for him, fear and disgust—the next was simple and possibly more terrifying.

Where’s Bill?

The demon turned slowly and regarded Castiel, then turned its burning gaze to Dean, lips pulling back farther and farther and farther—teeth gnarled and ugly and sharp in its oversized mouth.

Dean could feel its intent building, could hear it in the deafening screams of the souls in its belly, like the shriek of the wind through a keyhole. Hundreds of voices all crying for mercy and finding none. The pressure of it was nearly crippling, but Dean pushed back against it, found something in his core, something bright and hopeful and he wrapped himself around it protectively. Became feral inside in an attempt to protect it. 

In that half second before the demon lunged— Dean could feel Castiel shifting on his feet, blade turning in his grip. From the corner of the room the shadows shifted, and Dean saw lightning glint off something round and filled with dark liquid held aloft above a shaggy, bleeding head. 

Bill threw himself at the demon with a cry much like Rusty the bobcat, and smashed the still steaming pot coffee over the demon’s head. 

What Dean expected to happen was that the demon would turn, unaffected, and blast Bill to nothing with a single touch—Dean was not expecting the coffee to smoke against the demon’s skin, boiling at it—or for the demon to release a scream of its own, spin on its heel and smoke out of the room. 

Bill stood there, shaking, plastic carafe handle still clutched in his fist, rain blowing in on him. 

Dean shook his head, stunned; “W-was that Sanka?”

Bill turned to him with his nose wrinkled; “You think Singer’s the only one to slip a little holy water in your drink?” Bill pressed the back of his wrist to his bleeding head; “Nifty, huh,” And collapsed in a heap on the floor.

0-0-0

“They ain’t never gonna let me live this down,” Bill said, peering up at the ceiling tile from his hospital bed. “I got beat up as a kid once for askin’ one of the boys from the Rez if he’d ever scalped anybody… Then when I got home my ma’ma took a kitchen spoon to my ass an’ made me eat soap… And here I am—fifty-nine years old and I get half scalped by a goddamn light pole.”

Dean was butted up into the corner with Sputnik between his feet, Castiel to his right watching as a doctor made tiny delicate stitches putting Bill’s hairline back where it should be, and another put the finishing touches on a cast taking up the majority of the older hunter’s left arm. 

“I don’t think you’re technically scalped,” The doctor stitching his head spoke behind his paper mask, his name badge said Mitchel Bluth, M.D. Ph. D., “That usually entails a little more damage than this.”

The one at his side had short black hair, but no nametag, Dean couldn’t remember what he’d introduced himself as, and had taken to calling the man McCoy in his head. 

“Says you. You ain’t never been scalped before,” Bill muttered dejectedly and side-eyed Dean; “’s it look awful?”

Dean hummed; “Sure, Bill.”

“Good… If it’s gotta happen, I wanna be able to say it looked awful.” 

The doctor chuckled; “It’s not that bad. Head wounds tend to bleed a lot. You’re lucky it was only the glass that got you. If that pole had hit you, you would have been in a lot worse off than a concussion and a broken arm,” He finished his stitch work and took a moment to put his instruments away, then spritzed the wound with disinfectant, patted it dry and stepped back to let the nurse who’d come in with gauze bind the man’s head. “I’d like to admit him overnight—just for observation. He has a concussion and I’d rather be safe than sorry… The nurse told me neither of you were injured?”

“Cas got a cut on his foot, but he’s checked out already. And I don’t think you can repair my pride, so—“

The doctor grinned and peeled off his gloves; “No, sorry. That’s not my area of expertise,” He turned to Castiel; “You stepped on glass?”

Castiel lifted his bandaged foot. “I’m up to date on my tetanus vaccinations.” 

“Ah, good. Well, I’ve got to put Mister Kingston’s paperwork through, but they’ll be moving him to a room shortly. I’m sorry to say that he’ll likely be placed on a public ward, but I can show you to the waiting area if you’d like.”

Dean cast a look Bill’s way and caught the man making a sour face at the doctor’s back. He curled his uninjured hand, index and pinky finger extended like horns, then gestured with his thumb at the door. “I’ll be alright if you two wanna head back to the hotel. No point in you sittin’ in plastic chairs all night.”

Dean swallowed past a dry spot in his throat; “Yeah—the manager gave us a new room and a free night. You want me to call home for you?”

“Be much obliged,” Bill relaxed against the bed. “Don’t want no one worryin’ over me.”

Dean led Castiel out to the Impala and stuffed his crutches into the back seat. Castiel had seemed insulted by them at first, but when the cut on his foot hadn’t begun to spontaneously heal he’d crinkled his nose in annoyance and taken them. 

Dean fished his phone out of his pocket as he maneuvered from the parking lot and started speaking as soon as the line connected; “Bobby, look—we’ve got a situation—“

“Bobby’s not here right now,” Ellen said, voice pitched in annoyance; “You wanna leave a message or try his cell?”

Dean’s voice faltered and he made a monotone noise in the back of his throat; “Uhhh—N-no. Uh—I… Is he just on the can or is he actually not there?”

“He’s after that deer again. Got Jo out there helping him because Sam refuses to shoot at it. They’re camped out on the roof of the garage—made me make sandwiches.”

“Who wants to shoot Bambi?” Dean muttered, “Sam there? Put that big ol’ brain of his to use before it starts to atrophy.”

Ellen scoffed, “Yeah, right… You still hunting that demon?”

“We hit a snag. Some of the souls it swallowed are missing and they shouldn’t be.”

“That sounds like more than a snag,” Ellen said. She spoke off into the room, “Hey, come on, Sleepy-Head, I need your help with something.”

“What?” Sam’s voice was low, not quite coherent. “What’s wrong?”

“Dean needs help with his case, you get the specifics I’ll boot up the computer,” Ellen passed over the phone.

Sam took three long breaths, to wake himself, and put the phone to his ear; “Dean? What’s up?”

“Spider demon,” Dean said, by way of greeting; “Known in hell for swallowing, or eating souls and transporting them from nightmare to nightmare. At least until they’re more cooperative. Apparently it slipped out the Hell Gate a couple years back and has been working its way across the north-west. Incinerates the body and chews up the soul,” He cleared his throat, shoulders shaking out a sudden chill. “Bill got himself concussed when the damned thing knocked a light pole through the window of our motel room—“ A snort, “He sent it flying with a pot of Holy Java!”

Sam chuffed quietly.

“It’s been hunting in a pattern, snakes one person, waits two nights, comes back for the family, usually it only hit one family per town, but it picked a town on the Reservation where some hunters live and tried to wipe it off the map to get to one woman and her baby. Thing saw me and hit the road. Three nights ago it started breaking pattern, and if that isn’t weird enough, it should have close to five-hundred souls in its belly right now, but there’s only about three—”

“Yeah, that’s a problem. Any idea what happened to them?”

“Not a clue. I was hoping Bobby could swing someone out by the Gate and make sure it’s not cracked open.”

Sam spoke quickly to Ellen, told her to pull up the weather map for that part of Montana, but there was nothing unusual. 

“Maybe it threw up?” Sam put in helpfully.

Dean shook his head, fingers tapping against the steering wheel, “Not how that works. Once a soul is in there, it’s in there until they cut it out.” 

“So something cut some of the souls out?”

“We don’t know. If they wanted them, why didn’t they just take all of them! Why only take some of them?”

“Maybe it cut them out of itself?”

“But why? More souls mean more power. If you’re going to take some, just take all of them and kill the thing.”

“Unless something wanted to power it down, but not enough to leave it vulnerable to attack from other demons. And not powerful enough to put up a fight.” 

Dean’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. 

“Dean? You still there?”

Castiel’s brows lifted, “It would explain why the demon broke its pattern, and where the souls went. If it aligned itself with a demon powerful enough to remove the souls without them escaping—or to transport it to and from Hell, it wouldn’t have a reason to go to the Devil’s Gate anymore. Another possibility is that a reaper overpowered it long enough to rob some of the souls and fled with them.”

Sam hummed thoughtfully; “Maybe it got into a fight with another demon and got some of its lunch money stolen?”

“Which one is more likely?” Dean spoke into the phone, teeth on edge. 

“Well, if it had just been a reaper, or the result of a demonic—or even angelic attack, wouldn’t it still go back to the Gate looking for a way in?” Sam called out farther into the house for Ellen, asked if she’d heard word of any other hunters tracking a demon toward Dean’s location, or some kind of trail that would put one in their path. 

“The Nevada map is a mess,” Ellen called back after a moment. “I can’t tell what’s demonic and what’s just bad weather…” She paused, muttered something Dean couldn’t hear. Sam translated; 

“The cat thing—With the stray cats killing themselves on the turnpike—That happened again, this time in Chicago—about a week ago. Anything weird with cats in the area?”

Dean thought about it carefully, “Not that I know of. Well, Bill’s got a pet bobcat, but that’s just normal weird, not suicidal animals weird.”

“Bill’s got a pet bobcat?” Sam sounded genuinely concerned; “Why does he have a pet bobcat?”

“Scare off thieves? I don’t know, guy lives in an old gas station and drinks Sanka like it’s going out of style. Probably got brain damage from all the fumes.” 

Sam sighed, “Okay, well, maybe Castiel can do a search of the city for other demons.”

“Yeah, I’ll have him do that when we get back to the room,” Dean cleared his throat nervously; “See if you can find anything on this thing—like maybe some mention of its name or whatever… They—uh—they’re called ‘The Crawling Ones’ according to Cas, so maybe there’s something out there.”

“Does he not know their names?”

“No. They’re like hellhounds, they’re not remnants of human souls. They’re something else.”

“Gotcha,” Sam said, Dean could hear him grunt with the effort of hefting himself upright. 

“Oh, Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Any way to get hold of some ingredients for a spell?”

“What kind of spell?”

“Enochian.”

“OLD Enochian,” Castiel said, pushing his head closer to the phone. Dean leaned away from him with a curled lip.

“Uh, okay?” Sam muttered in concern; “What kind of ingredients?”

Dean held the phone out so Castiel wouldn’t be breathing down his neck anymore.

“Salt from the Dead Sea, water from a Holy Place, Holy oil, rose hips, and a large piece of wood from a thousand-year-old Jerusalem pine.”

Sam rattled the list off to Ellen who went to fetch Bobby from the roof of the garage. Sam rolled into the kitchen and opened the pantry to see if he could find the rose hips. Said they were probably on a jar on the top shelf and he’d have to get Ellen to reach them when she came back. 

Dean listened to him moving around, and felt a nagging itch in the back of his mind. “So… How was yoru date?”

“Date?” Sam said, off handedly. Voice pitched in suspicious calm. “What date?”

“With the barber chick?”

“She has a name, and it wasn’t a date.”

“Sure it wasn’t.”

“Dean—“

“What’s her name?” 

“Come on, man—“

“Sammy, at least tell me her name!”

“No, It’s none of your business—“

“Do I have to ask Jo? Cause I can, yanno. There’s this invention called a cell phone—“

“It’s Destiny, alright? And you better not fucking laugh—“

“Destiny?” Dean chuckled. “Her name is Destiny? Or do you mean that in the whole Danielle Steele ‘DESTINY’ kind of destiny.” 

“Her name is Destiny, okay? Stop laughing—It wasn’t a date! There’s this support group thing, alright? For people with disabilities… She saw Ellen and me in the store and invited me, I couldn’t exactly say no—not with Ellen right there and practically arranging transportation before I even opened my mouth— STOP LAUGHING YOU ASSHOLE!”

“It’s like a pornstar name—“

“I hope Sputnik pees on your boots.”

“Aw, come on, I’m just kidding—Lighten up.”

Sam huffed; “Right… anyway, it’s just a support group, twice a week in town. It’s not a date.”

Dean rubbed the mirth from his eyes; “Right, she just happens to discover a support group for people—in your condition? She’s fishing!”

“She’s an amputee, Dean.”

Dean hesitated, mind quickly thawing; “What? No way.”

“Uh—yeah. Right leg, below the knee. She had meningitis as a teenager and lost a leg.” 

Dean was silent for a good five seconds. “No… Really?”

“Really.”

Dean’s mouth opened and closed.

“Besides, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t play for my team, yanno?”

“Dude! She was totally flirting with you before—” 

“NO!” Sam said adamantly. “I am not— just no!”

Dean tapped the brake and pulled to a stop at an intersection, signal light on; “Sam, this doesn’t change anything. You bein’ in a wheelchair doesn’t—“

“Yeah, it kind of does.”

“Not really. I mean you can just lie back and—“

“You kind of need a fully functioning joystick to play the game, Dean.”

Dean’s mind blanked, “Dude, I didn’t—You mean not at all?”

“I’m not talking about this.” 

“Not even a little bit?”

“Bobby’s coming in, I’m done talking—“

“They make like—appliances for that, Sammy—“

“Just shut up. For the love of God, Dean, shut up!” Sam passed the phone to Ellen as she came in.

Dean glanced to the side and found Castiel staring at him with one eyebrow raised, he glanced away in shame, and back again to hide the fact he was ashamed—then away again because he felt guilty; “What, like you’ve never had problems.”

Castiel jutted his chin forward defensively and looked away. 

Bobby was annoyed that his hunt was disturbed, but he was sympathetic. He had rose hips—old ones because his roses were continuing to recover from his mistreatment over the years. The ‘thanks Dean’ went unspoken and Dean felt a little disrespected but said nothing. 

But, Bobby didn’t have Holy oil—whatever that was—or a chunk of wood from a thousand-year-old Jerusalem pine. And though he had water from the catholic church in town, it wasn’t the kind of water Castiel was talking about. 

“How many rose hips do you think you’ll need?” Bobby said, counting out the ones in the jar; “I’ve got seven, and they ain’t very big. ‘bout the size of Ellen’s thumb-nail.” 

Castiel sighed dejectedly: “Can you procure more of them?”

“Might take me a while, roses usually bloom in the spring, we’re a couple months late… I’ll see what I can do.” 

Dean took a deep breath and let it out, “Thanks.” He pulled the Impala into the hotel parking lot. He sat there for a long moment, staring straight ahead, and when he spoke his voice was thin, barely loud enough to hold open his vocal cords, like string; “Cas—What… What’ll happen if we don’t try to summon the demon, but summon one of the souls inside it?”

“Either the soul will come alone, the demon will manifest, or nothing will happen at all.” 

“And if the soul comes alone?”

“Considering TK is the only soul we could possibly summon, as we’ve never made contact with Sarah’s husband; Should his soul come alone, we would lose the ability to track the demon.” 

“And if this hypothetical other demon took the kid…”

Castiel looked at him, one of those deep hard gazes that made Dean perfectly aware that this was not a human man sitting beside him. Castiel may look human, may have to eat and sleep now, but he was not.

“So, what you’re saying is, we need to get the demon tonight because we might not have another chance?” 

“Essentially.”

Dean started the engine again and backed out of his parking spot. “Well, that’s just perfect.” 

0-0-0

It wasn’t a big city, not when compared to others, but it was large enough that it took Dean and Castiel almost fifteen minutes to find the edge of it. Clouds were beginning to build on the horizon, the demon ramping up for another run. Apparently its first run-in with holy water wasn’t enough of a deterrent to keep it at bay all night.

Every city, no matter how large or small had at least one abandoned building. This one had an entire district of them, remnants of a booming past. Dean chose one in the approximate middle of the district, based more on its size and apparent isolation than any kind of structural aspect. 

Ancient crumbling railroad ties stacked nearby made Dean think that perhaps, this town had been a hub of some sort for ranchers transporting cattle. The rusting corral fences lying in twisted heaps amid scrub brush and dead weeds made a perfect hiding place for snakes and bees, Dean endeavored to stay away from them. He pulled the Impala into one of the building’s gaping entrances, headlights turned low enough to illuminate his path, but not alert the authorities who might, infrequently from the amount of graffiti, abandoned clothing, and crumpled condom wrappers—patrol the area. It looked kind of like the place a djinn would call home, dilapidated and musty, full of pigeon poop and ancient rusted machinery. 

The floor was littered with chunks of debris, most of it broken glass and pieces of the ceiling. Dean couldn’t get the Impala more than six-teen feet into the building without risking a sharp piece of metal, or shard of glass to his tires. 

Castiel seemed to sense what Dean was doing and when the hunter shoved a bag into his hands, he swung it over his shoulder and crutched after the hunter without complaint. Dean kicked the refuse and rubble away from a wide area of the center of the floor where the concrete was smooth and relatively un-broken, then sat his bag down and pulled out a can of spray paint. “How long would it take you to make that ink shit?”

“Not long. The time is dependent on how quickly I can acquire the ingredients and requisite components.”

“You still able to zap around with your foot like that, or is it out of the question?”

“The state of my vessel’s foot is…” He rolled his eyes, a disparaging sound bubbling up from his throat and seeming to echo around the empty warehouse. With a minute rocking motion of his foot and crutches, and a crack of invisible wings he was gone. It took five minutes. By that time Dean was finishing the pentacle of a devil’s trap and starting on the sigils etched along its edges. 

Castiel returned, pockets laden with fistfuls of rose hips, a jar of grey, chunks of salt in one hand, a strange looking earthenware vase in the other, and a splintery chunk of wood larger than Bobby’s normal fireplace log under one arm. He tottered a bit, unable to move without dropping something and Dean jumped to his feet to help. 

“Will it take long to make the ink?”

“A few hours, the wood must be burnt to ashes.”

“Do we have that long?”

Castiel looked at him, seemed on the verge of snapping, but took a deep breath and moved away. “I must have a clear, sheltered place to work.”

Dean followed him, arms laden, and helped clear away detritus to give the angel space to make a sort of altar on which to work the spell. 

It wound up being a short stack of broken railroad ties with a piece of roofing tin laid over the top. 

Castiel set the wood to burning atop the altar in the middle of a circle surrounded by chunks of salt. Then he sat back on the cold concrete to watch it, seemingly intent upon staying right there to watch. Dean stood over him for a few moments, then went to finish his trap. He returned once the paint was dry and after a moment of staring at Castiel, sat beside him and balanced his arms on his knees. 

“Cas? I’m gonna try to talk to the kid again, see if he’s got the demon’s name. If we can summon it, will the devil’s trap hold it? Or are we gonna have to wait for that to be done?”

“Your trap should hold it, as long as its affiliate doesn’t come to release it.”

“Can I ward this place from demons, or will that be counterproductive?”

Castiel blinked around, “This building’s primary construction is iron, it’s unlikely a demon would come here willingly.”

Dean nodded, shifted as if to climb to his feet, then changed his mind; “Do I need to lie down to talk to the kid, or can I just…” 

“You’re projecting a portion of your soul outside of your body. You should lie down, at least until you’ve become more accustomed to it.” 

Dean nodded and shrugged out of his over shirt, balled it up for a makeshift pillow and spread himself out on the concrete; “A lot more comfortable to do this in a bed, but you do what you gotta.” 

Castiel turned his head and stared at him from the corner of one too blue eye. “I’ll protect you.”

Dean didn’t reply, just shut his eyes, hands folded across his stomach.

Finding TK wasn’t as difficult as before. The demon was moving with the storm, amorphous now as it extended its newfound power into the atmosphere. The kid was frantic, tried to claw his way out of the demon—tried to claw at Dean like a drowning man in an effort to escape.

What—what happened! What’s wrong?

Monster—the kid said—there’s a monster here! It keeps reaching in and grabbing people! It’s ugly and wrinkly and there’s something black in its chest—it keeps cutting and CUTTING!

Dean tried his best to calm the boy, asked him again and again to describe the newcomer but all TK had seen were its hands. 

Like a zombie—all sickly and horrible and half bone! It—it’s taking people by the handful! There were kids in here before, babies! And now its quiet. No more crying! I can’t take it anymore!

Did you find the demon’s name? Have you heard its name at all?

It doesn’t have a name! I tried! I dug around in its head like you told me to and it fought me! It tried to get into my head too but I hid! I hid, so the Hands came back and pulled people out. I kept running away from them and going back to find its name, but it’s not there. It doesn’t have a name! 

Does it have a nickname? Anything to identify it specifically. Does it recognize anything any of the others have called it, does it accept something as its name? It can take a name for itself, anything at all!

TK was quiet, desperation shooting through him like static electricity; There’s nothing! There is NOTHING! It’s just a big hungry monster and it’s going after this little girl it saw getting off the school bus today! It’s going to kill her! 

Dean felt the jolt of it go through him; You know where it’s going?

I’ve been in its head, of course I know where it’s going! 

Images splashed across the forefront of Dean’s mind like raindrops. Distorted and horrific through lust and hunger and insatiable need to tearripdestroy, but there it was. Through the demon’s own eyes. 

She was little, her first day of school had been today. Five years old, her mother had put her in a denim skirt, a tiny purple shirt and red cowboy boots—

Dean jerked back, frightened, images of a dirty, neglected little girl in a torn skirt and too big boots lying crumpled and broken on the side of the highway, soda and moon pies scattered around her and a halo of blood under her head. 

Dean snapped back into his body like a rubber band, found himself twisted and curled in on himself with his head on Castiel’s thigh, arms around his stomach, and one of the angel’s hands carding slowly through his hair. He was still long enough to draw a deep breath and let it out, then he pushed himself up, pulling at Castiel’s hand; “We gotta go.”

“I can’t leave this unattended—“

Dean met his eyes, teeth grit; “I know where the demon’s going. If we hurry we can stop it.”

Castiel stared at him, then back at his altar; “Dean… I can’t leave this. If you catch it we will still need this seal to subdue it long enough for the souls to be removed. I can’t leave. You have to do this on your own.” 

Dean swallowed the sour burn of bile. Inside his organs were quivering, expectant of the plunge of a knife or a cold, burning, demonic hand thrust in to the elbow fishing around for his heart. He took a deep breath and let it out. 

A demon. A damned powerful one at that, all on his own. 

“If I leave this fire unattended and it goes out the process will have to be started all over again.”

“Can’t you burn it with your grace or whatever? Just insta-torch it!”

“The spell is complicated… I could use paint like you did, but it would leave the circle vulnerable to outside forces, much as the one that contained Alistair was broken… If I use this—“ He motioned to his ingredients; “The physical representation of the seal could be destroyed, but its integrity would remain. It would have grace woven into it and it would take grace to undo it—more grace than either of us have to spare for something like this.” 

“So, you’re saying that this ink you’re making, can make a circle unbreakable?”

“Unless acted upon by an angel of greater strength than I, yes.” 

“No demon could break it.” 

“No.”

Dean inhaled slowly, trying to force his lungs back into their correct position. He lifted a shaking hand and held it out, palm down; “You won’t leave this spot?”

“No.”

“You can protect yourself?”

“Of course.”

Dean’s throat constricted and he curled his fingers into his palm.

“Dean—“ Castiel reached upward and caught his hand, drew him downward.

Dean tilted his chin, expecting—

Castiel’s free hand flattened over the scar on his chest and pushed in. Dean felt the grace tracing the seal charge, almost as if he’d stuck his finger in a light socket. The sensation sent gooseflesh racing up and down his arms and back and his nipples pebbled. He pulled back in surprise and crossed his arms over his chest; 

“HEY—Jesus, Cas! Warn a guy!” He bent and snatched up his discarded flannel, yanked it on self-consciously and stomped toward the car.

Castiel grinned crookedly at his back, then turned to watch the fire on his altar.

0-0-0

Sarina McCombs lived in an apartment building with her father and step-mother. She’d been anxious to learn her father was getting married, she’d always heard that step-mothers were horrible, evil women. Every movie she’d watched said the same thing. Step-mothers put you in cupboards or made you into their servants, or sent you away to live in horrible boarding schools with no recess. 

Kelly wasn’t like that. 

Kelly made cupcakes and had tea-and-dance time with her and Daddy on Sunday evenings and taught her how to line dance. Kelly bought them matching outfits and braided her hair, even if it was difficult for her because their hair was so different and the first few times Daddy had to show her how to do it. Kelly’s hair was long and straight and brown and Sarina had hair like her daddy’s, black and super curly. 

Kelly wasn’t an evil step-mother, and maybe, that’s why Sarina hadn’t made the distinction of ‘step-mother’ to her teachers that morning when Kelly had dropped her off at school. Because Kelly wasn’t awful like step-mothers were supposed to be, she couldn’t sing very well, and she couldn’t dance to Sarina’s music, but Kelly tried, smiled and laughed and did it anyway because it was fun. 

Misus Stark had been surprised when Kelly dropped Sarina off, she hadn’t been expecting a white woman to be ‘Momma’. She’d sat down beside Sarina at recess while she was drawing pictures with the sixty-four-crayon box Daddy had bought her special, and asked; “Sarina, why did you tell me Kelly was your mommy?”

“My Mommy lives in El Paso, I see her on the weekends ’cause she works. Kelly’s my Mamma, she and Daddy got married on the FortofJoo-lie! There was fireworks!”

“So, Kelly’s your step-mother.”

“No, she’s my Mamma!”

“No, she’s your step-mother, your mother’s name is Josephina. It’s not very nice to lie to your teachers.”

Sarina had come home upset. Kelly couldn’t be a step-mother because step-mothers were awful! What if Kelly became awful while Daddy was away on business? What if Kelly became mean?

Kelly had met her at the curb because the sky looked gray and fat like the neighbor’s tabby. Like it was going to rain cats and dogs all over, like Kelly said.  
Sarina shook her head; “No, you’re nice, and you can’t sing but that’s OK ‘cause I like you anyway!”

Kelly smiled and shook her head, pulled Sarina to her chest and dropped a kiss onto her brow; “Then you don’t have anything to worry about. “Yes, I’m your step-mother, but I’m not mean and nasty. Missus Stark doesn’t sound too nice though.”

“She made us write the alfabess! Like sixteen times!”

Kelly laughed and they made salmon for dinner. 

Daddy came home from work in time to eat, and after they went outside to rollerblade up and down the block. Kelly was good at it—Daddy wasn’t. Sarina laughed when he fell on his butt. 

The man on the corner laughed too. He was tall and pale, paler than Kelly and he smiled too big for his face. His eyes were all wrong. When the city bus drove by the man disappeared, but Sarina could feel him watching from everywhere. Could feel mean and nasty inside him like a sick feeling in her belly. 

“I wanna go inside. I don’t wanna stay,” Sarina pulled on Daddy’s shirt. “Can we go inside? I wanna go inside.” 

The storm got bigger, and louder the later it got and fear of the man in the dark coat grew. Sarina had heard the news woman talking about a man in a black coat, when Momma and Daddy thought she was asleep. Daddy said the building’s Super had put new locks on the windows in January and the security lock was still on the door from when Sarina had been sleep walking last year. It would go off if someone tried to come in after it was set. 

Sarina wedged herself between Momma and Daddy after dessert, felt comforted by their presence on either side of her and sobbed pathetically when Daddy tried to put her to bed. 

“But there’s monsters in my room!” She clung to his shirt; “They’ll come outta the vent and eat me up!”

“Baby girl, there’s no monsters in the vent,” Daddy kissed her head and tugged playfully on one of her braids. “Any monster that tries to eat my baby girl’s gotta eat me first.”

“But I don’t want you to get eated!”

“Can’t eat me, I’m all tough and stringy like Auntie Bea’s potroast—EUCH!”

“YUCK!” Sarina made a face to mimic him. She prodded his face and arms; “You’re soft, you’re not tough—“

Daddy hummed thoughtfully; “You know, Kelly fights monsters.”

Kelly chuckled from the door; “Yep. Me and my uncle used to fight them all the time when I was younger.”

“You fight them away?”

“Uh-huh. Wanna know how we did it?”

“HOW!” Sarina curled her fingers together in her daddy’s hair, refusing to let it go.”

Kelly walked forward carefully and dropped to her knees by the bed, “Well, first, we tucked each-other in really tight!” She pulled the blankets up and tickled Sarina through them. “Then we’d get our guard dogs ready!” She wiggled a stuffed collie at the girl’s neck and ear until she cackled and pulled the toy to her chest; “And last… we’d make sure we had our lucky pennies across the window sill!” 

“But, I don’t have any lucky pennies!” Sarina’s eyes widened. 

Kelly’s eyes widened; “Well, lucky for you, I’ve got one right here!” She pulled a penny out of her pocket, “You can tell it’s lucky because it’s got the year you were born on it, see?”

Sarina nodded.

Daddy smiled and fished in the pocket of his jeans; “I might have one too,” He had three, truthfully, and Kelly lined them up across the windowsill. “There, all monster proof!”

“But what if it’s inside already!”

Kelly nodded, “Well, I’ll do an inspection!” She pulled out her cell phone and waved it over the vent and window and under the bed and inside the closet. “No monsters there.”

“You okay to sleep now?” Daddy said and tucked the blankets back up where they’d slipped down. “Got your puppy?”

“Got the puppy,” Sarina kissed the dog’s head. 

Even after Daddy and Momma had gone to bed Sarina lay awake staring at the windowsill. Did the pennies really have her birthday on them? Was that really all it took to keep the monsters out? 

The storm rumbled ominously outside and she heard rain beginning to plunk against the glass. Every time thunder rolled or lightning flashed she feared seeing that man’s face in the window. Her heart beat harder and harder. The light in the bathroom buzzed extra bright—flickered and went out. The street light outside their building died, the sound of the central air went hush. There was only the rain, the distant thunder and the camera flashes of lightning. 

The room felt oppressive, heavy and fat. 

Down stairs the neighbor’s dog yapped like it had been stepped on. 

Down the street she heard a car engine revving harder and harder—like when Mister Miles down the street had finally got that Mushtaaang he’d been working on for years up and running over the summer. He’d made the engine scream for hours until it had finally popped something and the engine had spluttered to its inevitable death, then he’d yelled loud enough to hear him two streets over; “HORSE SHIT!”

The dog down stairs was still barking—the dog across the street had joined in. Sarina’s heart was beating so hard she could feel it in her belly, could smell something like garbage and stinky tuna— 

And then it happened. That awful—horrible—nasty thing Sarina had feared.

Lightning flashed and there was a face in her window. But, not just in her window—IN HER ROOM! Standing there in front of the vent touching her lucky pennies. 

Tall and pale in a black coat with a face like one of the Kabuki masks she’d seen in National Geographic in Daddy’s dentistry office. 

His head turned backward on his neck and in his face his eyes burned like fire embers. 

Sarina screamed—

0-0-0

Dean didn’t know how to get to the building, that knowledge hadn’t carried over through the connection he had with TK’s soul. He also didn't think pulling over and asking for directions was a wise decision considering he was going to be creating some havoc on said street and a cop being able to ID him, his car, and his intent to be there would only put the biggest fucking wrench in things. 

So, he did the only thing he could do. He picked a street and drove its length, then picked another and repeated the process until he had begun a grid of the city in his head. The biggest clue he got was actually from the images TK had given him. He’d seen the school bus, seen the front of the building. Seen the kind of neighborhood the girl lived in. 

His phone rang at a little after midnight.

“Hey, ya, Winchester!” Bill sounded groggy; “Where’d you and the choir boy run off to?”

“Uh… working, why?”

“I checked myself out… Dumb nurses called the cops because they caught me smokin’ in the shed out back with a couple orderlies.”

“I thought you quit?”

“It wasn’t cigarettes.”

Dean snorted; “Yeah, OK, where are you?”

“I hitched back to the motel but you two wasn’t there. I’m just playing buzzard right now, circling the park and watching the storm. It’s getting’ pretty nasty. Thinking he might make land-fall any minute. You and the angel ready to hop outta here?”

“Actually,” Dean said, heart speeding up when he drove past an elementary school with a familiar name; “I know where the demon’s going.”

Bill coughed; “You know where it’s going?”

“It’s after this little girl from Newton Elementary. It’s on Sixth and Pueblo. I only got mental images, but it was enough.”

“Anything specific about her?” 

“Not really,” Dean circled the school, guessing the range of the district; “Just a cute little black girl in a cowgirl outfit… The woman she was with, her mother’s white, if that helps.”

Bill hummed; “Not much, no… Elementary schools though, they don’t have a very big range, specially in a city this size. There’s three high-schools, four if you count the Catholic school—the TV on the ward was talking about the City-All Star Baseball team… So, there’s at least six elementary schools. So, you’ve got a range of about thirty-four square blocks to each school, with the school as the epicenter… I’ll head your way and help… Any idea what kind of house we’re looking for?”

“Not a house, apartments. Big tan building with a high fence and a playground in the back… has a pool.”

“That narrows it down a lot… Go sixth through twelfth-street, everything lower than sixth is houses.”

“How do you know that?” Dean said.

“It’s called a map, dumbass. That and you got to take into account the urban sprawl. It’s apartments and businesses in the middle, houses on the outside.” 

Dean pulled a U-turn in the middle of the street and took down sixth. Ten minutes later the rain started to fall. Slowly, as if biding its time, almost gentle if the drops didn’t leave behind the faint scent of sulfur. 

He met Bill again coming down ninth while Bill was moving slowly down Boiler Avenue. He looked ashen under the wide band of gauze wrapped around his head. He’d had the sense to tie a bandana around it to confuse the casual observer. “Where’s your sparkly friend?”

“Setting up a devil’s trap.” 

“You can’t do that yourself?”

“Not one like this, no.” 

Bill dabbed his head to the side a little acquiescingly. “Fair enough. “You find anything?”

“Not yet, but the electricity’s acting funny two streets back, so I’m thinking that’s our stop.” 

Bill nodded, “I’m gonna keep looking this direction, if anything looks fishy I’ll lay on the horn. Might not be able to call.” 

Dean nodded. “Horn might not work either.”

Bill sneered and thumbed a switch on his steering column. The blast was just this size of deafening. Like standing on a street corner with a semi-truck parked two-feet behind you hitting its airhorn just to be an asshole.

Bill cackled but Dean couldn’t hear it, his ears were ringing. 

“Werewolves hate it!” Bill’s mouth moved but there wasn’t much sound, then he waved and drove away.

The rain started to pick up about five minutes later and Dean knew he was running out of time. He only had one street left by Bill’s approximation of the school’s gerrymandering. It wasn’t luck, if anything, Dean had some pretty weird luck when it came to demons, but it was chance that he looked to his left, just as lightning struck. 

Dean had been operating under the assumption that the building would be facing the main street as that was where the bus was when the girl had gotten off of it. He hadn’t expected that the bus would have pulled into a parking lot to unload its students, so when he turned his head and saw it, tan façade, playground, and compact electric cars, he was too shocked to put on his brakes immediately. He reversed and noticed there was a gate of sorts across the entrance to the lot, one of those aluminum poles on a hinge like in old movies. There were still lights on in the building, and around the pool out back. Everything was safe for the moment. He called Bill.

“I found it… Eleventh, just past the Boiler intersection. It’s gated, so we might have a problem, but we can salt around the building if we have to.”

Bill snorted; “Sounds fair, how much salt we need? Cause I might have to get a few more boxes.” 

“I didn’t actually mean SALT… We can ward the place faster. Cas showed me some Enochian sigils we can use. Just scratch them into the stucco at grass level and nobody will ever notice them.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you there.” 

Dean contemplated turning around in the street, but there wasn’t enough room between the cars parked along both sidewalks. He put the Impala into gear and drove to the next intersection, pulled a tight U under the flashing yellow caution lights. 

Sputnik whined from the seat beside him, lifted her head, hackles up—and growled. 

Dean glanced at her cautiously; “What?” And when he looked up again lightning flashed and the Impala’s engine died, all its lights flickering out. 

Sputnik came to her feet, barking, spit foaming at the edges of her furry lips. 

Dean cursed under his breath and twisted the key in the ignition; “Come on—Come ON, Baby, don’t do this to me!” He bared his teeth, hand shaking on the key and pushed in with all his might against the engine of the Impala, against the wires and battery—Felt her trying to turn over, felt the demon’s influence pushing against him from above like an icy weight. It latched onto him, speared his mind with thoughts of blood and fire and pain—

But Dean resisted, PUSHED BACK! The Impala spluttered—and roared back to life. Dean felt a tingle of triumph under his skin and he slapped the car into gear, foot on the gas and shot forward. Wipers slashing across the windshield. Between one splash and the next there was a man standing in the road—Unremarkable looking, some balding middle aged guy in a black coat—but then—FLASHBOOM!— And Dean saw blackness, saw thin spidery arms and misshaped hands with a thumb on either side of the palm, claws and a smooth, placid, GRINNING FACE. No more hiding, no more illusions.

Dean put both feet on the brake, came to a sudden halt with the demon standing there, one deformed hand on the Impala’s hood, rain sizzling and steaming around it—the engine revved, roared—SCREAMED against the pressure of the demon’s will—but wouldn’t die. 

Sputnik was making high pitched yipping noises in distress, had wedged herself bodily against Dean’s hip in an effort to find comfort from the confusion and hurt. Dean bared his teeth, slammed his foot into the gas and the tires screamed against the pavement, spun and smoked and left black slashes across the pavement. The demon scurried thumpbumpslap! Up the hood and over the windshield, and took to the sky, a slithering shape amid the ectoplasm as it dove like a meteor at the apartment. 

Dean gave the wheel a mighty jerk to the left, felt the car sliding—fishtailing across the street, through the intersection and puddles. She roared and shot forward after the demon, skidded around the corner in pursuit, just as the monster flung itself up onto the second story of the building, running along the wall, as if gravity didn’t matter. Dean saw Bill running down the street toward him, gun in hand, still too far away to help. Dean slammed on the brakes and the Impala skidded to a stop perpendicular to the street, nose in the complex’s driveway, cuddled up too close for comfort to the gate. 

Dean gave Sputnik a shove away from himself and slammed the Impala’s door before she could leap out—took off at a run around the car—vaulting the gate. He looked up, vision glowing with the color of the earth and the sleeping tenants.

The demon took the corner of the building like a trapeze, swung itself to the ground on the fire-escape on the fourth floor and seemed to tower omnipotent over the railing, GRINNING down at Dean with hellfire for eyes. He could see the glow in its throat and nostrils every time it inhaled and exhaled, felt it eating into his very soul—But the demon only stood there watching while Dean ran at the fire escape, launched himself at the drop-down ladder… and missed. Dean tried again, roaring in rage so potent the street light above his head burned bright for a moment and faded out again. 

The demon smiled, huffed out a low, grating laugh, slashed its black forked tongue over its lips and slithered between the window’s sash and the sill. 

Dean snarled, turned and ran for the front door, breath not coming quick enough because he knew he wasn’t going to get up there in time to stop it. Knew it was hopeless, but knew he was going to fight tooth and nail to stop it. He shouted in desperation, sliding in the wet concrete, heart reaching across space; CAS!

Upstairs Dean heard a little girl scream—and half an instant later the windows above his head blew out in a flash of light the color of the midnight sky and Dean felt it into his bones.

CAS!

HERENOWPRESENT!

Another scream—Dean fought with the door, gave up—threw his weight against it and smashed through. Crunched into the lobby and made for the stairs. Took them two-and three at a time, pushing past people scurrying down. 

Dean felt sweat running down his back in sheets, felt his nose curl up from the stink of scorched flesh and sulfur, could hear more screaming as he made it to the fourth floor. Found the neighbors peering out of their apartment with hands over their ears. Dean moved down the hall quietly, gun easing into his hand as if he’d been born holding one, he motioned to the people with a finger to his lips; “FBI, go back inside, lock your doors and windows, stay inside the bathroom.”

The man ushered his wife and son back inside and shut the door, head bobbing in agreement. 

Dean reached the apartment door, bracing himself to kick it in when suddenly the door flew open and a woman dashed out clutching a weeping little girl in her arms. The woman backed into the corner, petting the girl’s head and face, checking her for injuries and murmuring nonsensically that it was OK, everything was going to be OK!

The woman looked up, as if noticing Dean for the first time and twisted with a soundless scream, putting herself between Dean and the child. 

From inside the apartment Dean could hear the demon snarling like a trapped animal and Castiel’s voice; 

“Don’t move- Just don’t move, keep it pinned!”

“I’m TRYING!” A man’s voice, rough and fighting for air. 

Dean pushed into the room, gun sweeping left and right. The interior of the apartment was unrecognizable. Walls blackened as if by an explosion, rain splattering in through broken windows. 

Castiel was propped up in the corner, legs stretched out in front of him arms limp, shirt stained with a slash of red. More was dripping from his mouth and in the kitchen floor was a large man, pinning the demon to the tile amid a scattering of pink sea salt from a broken jar, with an iron bacon press shaped like a grinning, plump pig. 

The demon was writhing, snarling and snapping its teeth, had taken on its human like form once more, and when it saw Dean its orange eyes widened and it released an inhuman shriek, renewing its efforts to escape. 

Dean sneered down at it, kind of wanted to shoot it, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. Wouldn’t even really hurt it. Instead he took a deep breath and let it out, let his shoulders sag and swiped his wrist across his brow, “You got it?”

The man’s head whipped around and he stared at Dean with his eyes wide; “Who the hell are you!”

“I’m here to help. You hurt?”

The man shook his head; “Just hoping this is a dream is all.” 

“Unfortunately, no,” Dean knelt by Castiel, hands on his face, “You OK?”

The angel peered up at him, lids sagging; “I heard you… I heard you and I came.” 

Dean nodded, “I can see that,” He peeled up the tail of Castiel’s shirt and used it to wipe the blood from his face. 

Castiel pushed his hand away, “I’m fine,” He tried to lever himself up but his arms shook and the exhaustion was written plainly on his face, in the way his grace pulled ravenously at Dean’s. 

“You’re sucking fumes, man.” 

Castiel tilted his head away. “Help Trevor, I’m fine.” 

Dean shook his head, agitated and turned to the man—Trevor—slipping his hand into the grip of the press and taking over pinning the demon to the floor; “Go check on your kid.”

Trevor was shaking, pushed himself up and fled the room, murmured comfortingly to his wife and child and wept with them in relief. 

Bill rounded the corner into the apartment, huffing and puffing and holding his head. Outside the rain slowed to a stop—the air stilled. With an ominous sounding BOOM, electricity returned to the building.

From downstairs Dean could hear a baby crying, could hear a dog whining and howling. Could hear the girl and her parents sobbing and Trevor whispering; “It’s OK. It’s OK, Baby girl. We’re safe now. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry!”

Bill stumbled into the kitchen swaying dizzily and dripping, looked down at the demon and kicked it savagely, then turned to give Castiel a long, expectant look; “How the hell do we get it to your special trap now?”

0-0-0

The demon screamed the whole time. Not that Bill really cared. Having a demon tied up in the passenger seat of his truck was a joy compared to having a demon swallowing handfuls of people’s souls left and right. So what, he had a massive headache, at least he was alive, and pretty soon this demon would be quiet for the rest of eternity. 

It was getting around the cops that was the tricky part. As soon as power had been restored to the building the fire department and police had been called. Apparently the building’s gas lines weren’t exactly up to date, and after a quick conversation with Trevor and Kelly—after they’d calmed Sarina down enough to stop crying hysterically—about the nature of monsters and demons, they’d agreed to claim it must have been a gas leak set off by a broken blub because of the electricity outage. 

Castiel was unsteady on his feet, but managed to limp off to finish his ink. Collected what ash there was and declared he was making the seal smaller to accommodate for their lack of time. 

He had the mixture completed in less than fifteen minutes. The fifteen minutes it took Dean and Bill to wrestle the resisting creature from the truck and into Dean’s devil’s trap and send up the call to their cigarette smoking reaper. 

The demon made an awful noise, writhing against the chains bound around it, like a child having a temper tantrum. 

Neat and tidy it wasn’t. Castiel finished painting the seal, held his hand over it and spoke a series of low, multisyllabic words and the whole thing lit up with blue-white flames. Bill didn’t seem to have noticed, so Dean wondered if this was more of the invisible-to-human-eyes stuff having some of Castiel’s grace in his chest let him see. 

The demon however began to scream in earnest. Ear piercing screeches like a pterodactyl mixed with a dying animal. Its body warped and stretched and became entirely inhuman once more, its deformed hands and feet tried to grab and pull at the chains but the iron burned every place it touched. 

Dean stepped into the circle and grabbed one arm, Bill the other, and with a scrape of Bill’s knife against the paint to let the demon through, they walked it over to Castiel’s trap and threw it in. 

The flames leapt higher, burning purple at the edges, and the demon arched up, held and fell silent, body in spasm as it fought to free itself, and found it impossible. 

Castiel stayed upright for ten seconds more, then crumpled into Dean’s side, almost knocking him from his feet. His skin was clammy and chilled and he didn’t respond immediately when Dean tried to rouse him. Too much, Dean chanted in his head; he did too much and it’s my fault. 

Dean practically had to drag him across the warehouse to the Impala, climbed into the back with him and tried to chafe warmth into his arms. Bill stood outside and watched the demon. 

Sputnik yawned and stretched in the front seat, bedded down with her head on Dean’s jacket, smacking her lips until she’d settled again. 

Dean wound up leaned against the passenger door with Castiel held to his chest, rain coat spread over them both as a blanket, watching Bill converse with the cigarette smoking reaper when he appeared, as promised. How he knew Dean didn’t really care. Reapers were freaking weird. 

He watched though, because he wouldn’t be able to rest if he didn’t, watched the reaper admire the circle before stepping into it and catching the demon by the throat and reaching into its middle to remove the souls. It was oddly quiet, considering, the demon’s mouth opened and closed, but Dean heard nothing. Maybe it was because of the seal, maybe it was because the reaper took its voice. It didn’t matter.

Dean had only ever seen a reaper from the front, from the back they looked completely different, wings spreading, arms opening, all the brightness. It was beautiful, haunting, but beautiful. 

The reaper stepped back and Bill stepped forward, Castiel’s borrowed blade in hand to end it, once and for all. He was merciful, considering how much damage the demon had done. How many people it had killed and lives it had ruined. Bill killed it with a name on his lips, justice, not revenge. Killing it wouldn’t bring any of the people it had taken back, but it would stop it from hurting anyone else. 

The demon crumpled to the ground and fell apart, like the wood still smoldering on Castiel’s altar. Burned up by the power of the unbreakable seal trapping it. 

Dean breathed in and out, pushed his fingers into Castiel’s hair and pressed his lips against the angel’s sweaty brow; “We did it… It’s over.” 

0-0-0

It’s dark, the club is empty save the demon and the bar keep—who is also a demon, but that is quite beside the point—

“You’re late, as usual.”

The reaper grins snidely, slides into the booth opposite and takes the demon’s scotch.

“You’re also either very ballsy, or very stupid,” the demon lifts a hand and orders another drink. “Where have you been? I’ve been sweating grenades and you’ve been off playing Florence-fucking-Nightingale.”

“Gotta make a living,” The reaper grins.

“We had a deal, and not only am I now sitting on a dead Crawlie, I’m feeling the pressure from below. It’s not as pleasant as you might think it is.”

The reaper chuckled.

“What are you tittering about?”

“You act like killing that thing wasn’t inevitable. It was getting too powerful, too aware of itself. Pretty soon it would have started fighting. You’re lucky you got away with as many as you did.”

“I know you’re not making jokes. I’m not very fond of jokes, especially after tonight. I lost nearly four-hundred souls to that Winchester and his coin-operated angel!”

“Tonight?” The reaper smiles, “I’m the golden goose,” he snaps his pocket watch shut. 

0-0-0


	48. On Accident

 

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

Castiel was a grumpy asshole.

Bill brushed all the salt and wood ashes into a jar and stuffed it into the Impala’s trunk because Dean couldn’t move from the back seat. Every time he tried Castiel made an animalistic growling noise and latched on with a ten fingered grip that was too firm to be human.

Dean wanted to go back to the hotel, wanted to collapse on the bed and sleep for the rest of the week because, now that it was over, he was becoming acutely aware of aches and pains in all his muscles, and an overall weariness that slowly began to eat at his patience.

In the end, Dean only managed to disentangle himself from the angel by virtue of his human stubbornness and Castiel’s waning angelic strength.

“You wanna be a grumpy asshole, I can be a grumpy asshole too!” Dean stomped around the car and slid behind the wheel, forced himself to ignore Castiel’s fidgeting and whines of discomfort and Sputnik’s huffs of annoyance.

Hotel Maintenance had stapled up tarps and put out orange cones to block off the area around the broken window to their old room. The fallen light pole had been removed and all that really remained of it was the bent and crumpled stump sticking up in the middle of the parking lot.

Their new room was on the opposite side of the building on the second floor. There was a basket of muffins on the little table, extra clean towels, and a note from management in apology.

Bill took the muffins because he was the one who got fucking scalped thank you very much and stomped back to his room to sleep off his migraine.

Dean—Dean stripped down to his boxers and crawled under the blankets, constructed a short wall of pillows between himself and Castiel and dropped almost instantly into sleep.

He woke an hour later to Castiel prodding him in the face. Felt like he’d been through a spin cycle and peered up at the angel through puffy, half coherent eyes. “What?”

Castiel didn’t say a damned word. Because he was a grumpy fucker with a sour expression.

Dean felt the buzz of his thoughts but couldn’t manage to find words or meaning in them; “Cas, I can’t, man… I’m exhausted. I need sleep. I’m—“ He sighed, “I’m too tired for this. Just talk already.”

“You were making noises. As if you couldn’t breathe.”

Dean rubbed his face and pulled the topmost pillow from the wall to his chest, wrapped his arms around it and scuffed his cheek against it. “Well, I’m sorry if I disturbed your beauty sleep.”

“I don’t sleep—“

Dean reached up and caught the angel by hair, yanked him down and held his stupid head to the pillow for emphasis.

Castiel didn’t say another word, just went still and quiet under the pressure of Dean’s palm, a few moments later his vessel went lax and his breath began to wheeze in and out of his chest.

Sputnik snorted from the foot of the bed and stretched her stubby legs, trembling with effort before going limp like a noodle.

Dean’s eyes opened again barely two hours later, saw the red glow of the clock ticking by another minute and wondered if it was possible to be too tired to sleep. His whole body ached—a DEEP ache that churned his stomach and made his eyes feel gritty and hot beneath their lids. Even fucking BREATHING hurt. Great, just great. Dean scrubbed his face on the pillow and wound up with hair in his nose.

Castiel had shuffled closer, had his head pressed to the pillow Dean had pulled to his chest, arm thrown over Dean’s waist, legs tangled under the blankets.

Dean could feel the pull of the angel’s grace on his own—was aware of a tenderness, like a sore muscle and tried to withdraw the connection but couldn’t quite manage it. “Cas,” He mumbled—voice catching and pulling his breath out in an explosive cough.

The angel twitched, growled and went still again.

Dean put a hand to his chest, beneath the pillow and blankets and thought vaguely that it was just his luck to wind up sick. “It’s flu season. If I get the flu because of this bullshit I’m gonna…” He didn’t finish the sentence, felt too drained to make the effort and shrugged a little farther under the blankets.

The next time he opened his eyes Castiel was shaking him and Dean could hear the muffled ring of his cell phone all the way on the opposite side of the room, still stuffed in the pocket of his jeans. He shoved the angel back and drew his knees up, cursed under his breath and with a spiteful thrust of his feet toward the end of the bed, kicked the blankets back and rolled toward the floor.

His bones felt stiff, muscles drawn tight across his shoulders and the back of his neck. Even the roof of his mouth felt sore. He kicked his jeans and fought with them for a few seconds until he found his phone, flipped it open and snarled into the mouthpiece.

“What!”

Ellen scoffed indignantly; “Excuse me? What the hell kind of greeting is that!”

Dean shoved a hand through his hair and only then noticed the arctic chill of the room. He hissed and curled his toes into the soles of his feet for protection, padded quickly back to the bed and rolled himself up like a burrito with Castiel pulled to his chest. “Sorry,” He sighed, “I’m—I’m tired.”

“You got it then?”

“Yeah… Took a civilian with a bacon press to pin it down.”

Ellen hummed; “Uh-huh… Well, I just called to tell you that, Bobby got your meds today so you should swing by and get them, and you’re due for a doctor’s appointment. Since you got the thing I’m not gonna call to change it, so you’d better start haulin’ ass back this way.”

Dean squinted in the direction of the clock; “It’s four in the morning!”

“It’s four in the afternoon!”

Dean swiveled his head toward the window and found a telltale gray glow around the edges of the curtains, along with the pitterpat of rain against the glass. He muttered a curse under his breath. “I’m not going to a doctor.”

“You’re going even if I have to hunt you down and drag you there by your hair.”

Dean felt a retort bubbling in his stomach but found it would take too much effort to fish it out from amid the churning contents of his stomach, he sighed; “Yeah, okay.”

Ellen snorted; “That’s it? No smartass remarks? You must be tired.”

He scrubbed his face into the pillow above Castiel’s head; “I just spent a week chasing a soul hungry demon across the mid-west. What do you want from me?” He muffled a cough into his arm.

“You sick too?”

“Maybe,” Dean exhaled; “My chest aches like I’ve got a cough, but there’s nothing, yanno—IN there to cough up. Feel sick, but… not. It’s weird.”

“Maybe it’s allergies.”

“I don’t know… Can I go back to sleep now?”

“Your appointment is three days from now. You’d better show up, I can track your phone just as easy as Sam can and I’m not afraid to put my foot in your butt on his behalf if you try to ditch this.”

“You can kick that high?”

“Laugh it up, Winchester. I’m just tall enough to hand your ass to you.”

Castiel lifted his head and peered around dazedly, rubbed the flat of one hand against his cheek and turned his attention to the phone in Dean’s hand.

“Seriously though,” Ellen said with a sigh, “Three days. Eleven-AM. No food or water after midnight.”

“What? Why!”

“Blood and urine tests. They need to make sure you’re taking your medicine and that you’re taking care of yourself.”

Dean muttered, “They wanna check my prostate while they’re at it?”

“That can be arranged.”

Dean rubbed his face, “I’m done… I’m too tired for this shit. I’ll call you when I wake up.”

“You better.”

Dean pushed the phone onto the nightstand and went catastrophically limp with a low groan.

Castiel narrowed his eyes; “Dean?”

“No… No, don’t ‘Dean’ me right now.”

“But that’s your name.”

“Yeah, and when you say my name like that you want something. Answer’s no.”

“You’re being purposefully obtuse.”

“I’m sleeping. Shut it.”

“Shut what?”

Dean tilted his head and peered up at the angel; “What, Cas? What do you want?”

“You’re exhausted—”

“Ya’ think?”

Castiel’s mouth thinned.

“You can bitchface me all you want but it’s not gonna change anything,” He tried to swallow a cough but had to turn his head and let it out anyway.

“You used too much grace and now you’re exhausted.”

“Well, if you’d let me sleep then maybe—“

“You simply use too much grace. It doesn’t take much to accomplish what you’re attempting to do.”

“Can we have the grace lesson when I’m not trying to sleep?”

“It could wait—“

“Thank you—“

“—If you weren’t trying to push what you have left into me.”

Dean inhaled deeply and let it out; “I’m what?”

“You’re worried about my collapse earlier and you’re trying to force grace into me. It’s uncomfortable and you’re hurting yourself.”

“I am not.”

“You don’t have to force it, just relax and let it happen.”

“Yeah, this conversation is over,” He rolled purposefully away and pulled the blanket over the back of his neck in an attempt to fend the angel off.

Castiel caught his shoulder and rolled him backward, loomed over him like some gargoyle or something; “Just relax. Trying to force it to happen is uncomfortable for both of us.”

“I am really done with this conversation.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re making it sound dirty.”

Castiel blinked; “Dirty?” He shook his head; “You’re infuriating.”

“Well, if you’ve gotta be good at something, be the best at it,” He rolled away again.

And Castiel withdrew. Dean felt it like a blanket being pulled away. Suddenly the room was colder and his body ached a little sharper. The angel turned his back and settled stiffly against the mattress, as much distance between himself and Dean as he could manage.

Dean withstood it for a little over thirty seconds then rolled back toward the center of the bed; “So, now I’m the bad guy?”

“You ended the conversation.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t tell you to fuck off! I’m—I’m TIRED, OK? And I’m pretty sure I’m getting the flu— I don’t care if you wanna draw on my face at this point, as long as you let me sleep while you do it I’m game.”

Castiel turned and stared over his shoulder, face twisted; “Why would I draw on your face?”

“Hypothetically…”

“Even hypothetically, why would I draw on your face?”

“You know what? Nevermind, ignore me. Turn your face from my fucking presence, I don’t care,” He flopped fishlike onto his other side and crossed his arms over his chest.

The next second Castiel was leaning over him face twisted in something close to anger; “You’re doing this on purpose. There’s no other explanation because I haven’t done anything worthy of this. You’re purposefully trying to upset me.”

“I’m just trying to sleep.”

“You turn your back on me, then become irate when I relent!”

“When you relent?” Dean blinked at him stupidly; “Wait a minute…” He motioned between himself and the angel; “Are you freaking out because I rolled over?”

“Presenting your back is a sign of dismissal… It’s offensive.”

“I just rolled over!” He rubbed his eyes, “Cas, look… Humans—It doesn’t mean that, OK? Do I feel angry to you?”

“You feel exasperated and on the verge of shouting.”

“Because I want to fucking sleep— You’re taking it out of context. I rolled over, I didn’t dismiss you.”

“Why?”

“Because I feel like crap and lying on one side for too long hurts!” He covered his face and forced himself to breathe, “Know what, fine…” He pushed himself up onto his elbows; “Turn over, we’re gonna end this.”

“What?”

“Just do it,” Dean pushed at his shoulder until Castiel had turned around and was lying on his side, back to Dean, body stiff, energy pulled in uncertainly.

Dean wrapped an arm around his middle and hauled him backward into his chest. “Sometimes it doesn’t mean anything, I just rolled over, OK?” Dean remembered a hotel room, months and months ago, Sam’s back pressed into his own, a wall between him and the world. How wretched he’d felt asking his brother for help, but the relief of it. “Sometimes it’s a sign of trust… But, if I was angry, you’d know.”

Castiel nodded. It was a tiny thing, barely perceptible. Dean only felt it because the prickly hairs on the angel’s jaw scratched audibly against the pillow. “Dean?”

“Hmm?”

“Why are you pinning me to your body?”

“Go to sleep, Cas.”

Slowly, by inches, Castiel felt his vessel relaxing, felt a strange hum through Dean’s grace and the pressure of it against his own eased.

Dean’s body eased into sleep, mind wandering. Back and forth until he settled into REM, brain activity kicking up with explosions of color and sensation reflected through the grace.

Castiel felt himself carried away on it, adrift. Felt himself slipping.

The dreams came. Backlit with the possibility of violence, but Castiel nudged, prodded, and coaxed Dean’s consciousness away from them.

He’d been trying, at every available opportunity, to help Dean learn to lucid dream. He tried now but found himself along for the ride instead, he spoke when he could, reminded Dean that this was all a dream and all he had to do was change it. And Dean tried—it was obvious he did. Sometimes he managed to change from a child back to an adult, others it was as if he didn’t even hear Castiel speaking.

Most of the dreams were nonsensical.

Dean dreamed his teeth were falling out and he knew they wouldn’t grow back, and that he was wearing the wrong shoes. That his voice was lost—cut away by one of Alistair’s knives, or he tried to run from some faceless black shape but moved as if through quicksand.

Castiel felt an ache inside him, sadness and NEED to fix it, but he knew he was completely helpless. If Dean could shut him out of his dreams Castiel’s grace was more degraded than he had originally believed.

He hurt in his Heart, felt a want to pull Dean close and take away all the awfulness. He wanted Dean safe, relaxed and unfettered by guilt and nightmares. He wanted—

Then Dean suddenly seemed to stop moving all together and—and just DID it. He faced the thing chasing him—screamed back at it and the world ripped apart around them, leaving them in an endless black void.

He was so shocked he shook himself awake and sat upright with a startled gasp.

Castiel woke half a second later and turned to look at him; “Are you alright?”

“I was dreaming,” He rubbed his eyes on his wrist; “I mean, I was doing that thing—while I was dreaming.”

Castiel nodded. “If Zechariah tries to invade your mind, you can push him away by doing the same thing. Waking yourself would be just as effective, but if he is in your mind you can manipulate him and unless he withdraws he will be vulnerable.”

Dean wiped at his face as if expecting sweat; “I could take him out like that?”

“No, but you can see through his attempts at subterfuge. You can escape him.”

“Would it work with Michael too?”

“Yes, as long as he doesn’t know where you are physically. Sam has escaped Lucifer’s influence twice now doing this.”

“Twice?”

Castiel nodded. “You did well.”

Dean eased back against the mattress, eyes locked on the ceiling.

“Are you alright?”

Dean hesitated, then after a moment nodded; “I’ve done that before… Changed my dreams,” He glanced away as if embarrassed; “Usually only did it for—for GOOD dreams, but,” He shrugged; “It’s harder to manage when I’m not actually enjoying what’s going on, yanno?”

“No.”

Dean blinked rapidly at the ceiling then turned to meet Castiel’s eyes; “Do you ever dream? I mean, I know you’ve been in my head a few times—maybe even Sputnik’s, but do you ever dream all on your own?”

Castiel opened his mouth to speak, to remind Dean that he was an angel of the Lord and didn’t sleep, therefore he didn’t dream, but he knew he was just being stubborn. The energy that was CASTIEL didn’t require sleep—not really—but his vessel did, and he had become so tied up in his vessel lately that he didn’t know if he could give a truthful answer.

“I haven’t… I don’t know if it’s possible. It may require that one has a soul to allow them to dream.”

Dean stared at him, brows puled down, perhaps disappointed. “If you could, what would you dream about?”

Castiel felt his brows draw down curiously; “I don’t know…” After a moment he hefted a deep breath and propped his jaw on his fist; “I’m not very good at hypotheticals.”

Dean bobbed his head to the side; “What would you want to dream about?”

Castiel shifted, rolled his shoulders until he was lying flat once more shoulder pressed against Dean’s, “I don’t know,” He folded his hands on his chest; “There’s something you must understand about angels… We don’t think like humans… Humanity thinks only in relation to one point in time… Angels can access thoughts from any time, past, present, or future.”

“What?”

“I don’t know that I can explain it in a way you can understand… But an angel’s mind is timeless. I can bring thoughts and sensations forward from eons ago, or bring glimpses of those that have not yet occurred back.”

“Your brain is like a time machine?”

“I believe that metaphor is the closest you will come to understanding.”

“Is it kind of like photographic memory?”

“Its not entirely dissimilar. But instead of just images, I can re-experience the entire occasion in an instant and explore it in ways unlike those that I had chosen at the initial encounter.”

“So, you can like, go back in time in your head and relive shit that’s happened to you?”

“Yes… Think of each decision you make as if opening a door, behind each door is a room filled with more doors. Humans can only choose one door. I can explore all of them, and all of those that have not yet been opened.”

Dean’s eyes widened; “That’s awesome. Can—Can I do that? Like, in my head?”

“You have… Zechariah sent you forward through a possible door into two-thousand-fourteen.”

Dean’s eyebrows went up and his lips pulled down, “That was kind of trippy.”

“So, you must understand, dreaming seems superfluous when I am able to examine my choices and future choices without the aid of subconscious brain activity.”

Dean nodded, rubbed his ear on his pillow and let his eyes fall closed; “Sometimes dreaming isn’t just for analyzing yourself,” He breathed in and out and while Castiel watched, drifted back into sleep.

Castiel watched him for as long as he dared, then followed.

0-0-0

Dean had seen hunting and the supernatural ruin their share of communities, homes, families, lives and friendships. He had memories of his father, for instance, wrestling in the floor of the den and pinning him to the rug with wiggling, tickling hands. John had also liked to hold him upside down and let him walk on the ceiling. That John and the one he had become after Mary’s death were two different people.

Watching that same change happen in Bill, however, was another matter entirely.

When they arrived back at Bill’s service station late the next day, Dean noticed three startling things: One, Castiel’s truck was parked at the disused pumps, tires replaced, tank full. Two, there were plastic storage totes stacked in front of the bay doors, and perhaps most terrible—was a shiny new gate over the reservation road. One of those metal bar deals that you could padlock. If Bill had really wanted to get back in there all he would have had to do was drive around it, but it was a symbolic thing. Dean could feel it just looking at it.

Bill had said he’d lived his whole life on the edge of the reservation, had grown up with and befriended the people who lived there, and from the stories, been beaten up a few times by them when he deserved it. This put an abrupt, and terrible end to that relationship.

Bill unlocked the storefront and let Dean and Castiel help him carry the boxes of his things back to his room. He peered around the space with a distant glazed appearance to his features and dropped into his recliner with a weary sigh.

Rusty appeared from the back room with a mighty yawn and stretch, bounded over and planted his bulk on Bill’s lap, rubbed his massive head against Bill’s chin until the man gave up sulking and scratched behind his ears. Let the bobcat sniff and rub on his cast and the bandages on his brow.

Dean stayed back near the door, eyeing the big cat; “What’re you gonna do now?”

Bill grunted and looked around again, as if he didn’t quite realize he was home; “Probably get this place up and running again… Been years,” He snorted, “Funny, how one demon can change your whole outlook,” He turned and met Dean’s eyes with a watery smile; “I’ll be fine. You two better get back, Singer’ll be wearing a hole in the floor.”

Dean opened his mouth to say that Bobby could do as he pleased, but something about Bill’s stance, something about the way he was focused on Rusty and nothing else gave Dean pause and he left without another word. Sometimes, you just had to let a man lick his wounds in peace.

Castiel was already outside standing beside his truck with a pensive expression on his face. He wore it often enough that it had lost its novelty, an angel being pensive about anything made Dean feel slightly uncomfortable, but with Cas—Cas… It made something warm flutter in Dean’s chest to see.

Dean swallowed past a tight feeling in his throat; “So, what’s your plan?” He leaned his forearms over the Impala’s roof and twisted the keys between his fingers.

Castiel tilted his face up and one hand went to his pocket, pulled out the amulet and stared at it on his palm. He hadn’t felt so much as a twitch from it in days. He wondered if it was because his focus had been elsewhere, or if his grace had wasted away to such a degree that he was just unable to feel it any longer. What if he couldn’t feel it? What if God was calling to him and Castiel couldn’t feel it anymore.

“You—uh—“ Dean cleared his throat, “You need any help looking for the big guy?”

Castiel’s lips tightened. Dean was counting on him. What if Dean found out how bad things actually were?

They’d spent all night and most of the previous morning connected. After he’d managed to lucid dream Dean had slept like a dead thing, Castiel pulled close. He’d been able to feel the grace of heaven reflected in Dean’s, had almost been able to hear the white noise of his kin. It had felt… He couldn’t describe it. Not just the flow of grace, but something more. Something deeper.

After his triumph Dean had dreamed of lying in a field, open and wide with the expanse of the universe stretched above them. Years had passed in the dream, decades, eons—and they’d watched the cosmos wheel over head. It had been peaceful in a way Dean’s dreams rarely were, and he didn’t even remember it. But, Castiel did. Remembered it in great detail because Dean had invited him to stay and they’d laid there in the dew damp grass, warm and dry with the other’s mouth inches from their ears, hands connected—and barely a word was spoken. Barely anything need be said.

Castiel hadn’t felt peace like that in millennia. Had never felt peace like that if he was going to be honest with himself, which he found most difficult. Castiel didn’t want to leave. He knew that with sudden, gut wrenching certainty. He didn’t want to watch Dean go—didn’t want to go off on his own.

He wanted to stay.

And it frightened him.

He had a responsibility, not only to Dean and Sam, but to all of humanity. He’d rebelled against heaven for the good of mankind. He NEEDED to find God and stop the apocalypse. He had to stop the host from destroying their father’s creation. He was obligated. It was his responsibility, and until then—until he’d managed it, he couldn’t allow himself to falter.

Castiel swallowed convulsively and shook his head; “No… You should go, Ellen did threaten to force her boot into your colon. And it is physically possible, but will be entirely unpleasant. I—I'll be fine on my own.”

Dean’s mouth twitched into a frown, eyes locked on his keys. He nodded and after a minute looked up again; “Cas…”

But Castiel was already moving, opening the truck’s door and sliding behind the wheel. The engine rumbled into life. Castiel could feel the vibration of it in his vessel’s heart—could feel his own heart pulsing and something felt stretched and thin and not right in his core.

He wanted to stay. He wanted to stay hewantedtostayhewantedtoSTAY!

But, then, why was he leaving? Why was he purposefully not looking at Dean’s shape retreating into the distance behind him? Why was he so afraid to stay when it was something he wanted? Something that felt more powerful than the weight of his responsibility.  


_Because I want it. I shouldn’t want anything and the fact that I do is evidence of exactly how far I’ve fallen._

_I’m lost, Father help me, I’m lost and if being Found means continuing to exist without this... I don't know if I can survive it. I don't know if I want to._

0-0-0

Dean arrived at Singer Salvage two hours late.

Ellen was on the back porch with a cup of coffee, tapping her foot in agitation from her perch on a relocated kitchen chair.

Dean claimed it was traffic but he couldn’t meet her eyes. “Where is everybody?”

“Bobby’s on a job—Salvage job, not a case. Picking up a truck that’s been sitting in an impound lot near Bismarck… Jo’s at the movies and Sam’s at his group meeting—they won’t be back until late. Bobby probably not until morning—He’s not too happy with my cooking.”

Dean raised an eyebrow, still found it difficult to meet her gaze. “More vegetables than just potatoes and beans I take it?”

Ellen took a drink of her coffee and bobbed her head to the side; “His cholesterol’s down, he should be thanking me, not taking overnight trips to gorge himself at steakhouses.”

“Aw, I doubt he’s—“

She snorted, amused, “Don’t try to defend him. He comes back with the meat sweats.”

Dean hefted his bag out of the trunk and rubbed tiredly at the side of his head.

Ellen let out a long suffering sigh; “Alright, get in here before we both get eaten alive by mosquitoes,” She upended her coffee cup over the railing and picked up her chair. Sputnik waddled slowly up the ramp and inside, went directly to her cushion and curled up with a contented yawn.

Dean could sympathize. Even though he’d slept off most of the hunt he still ached all over. Still had the urge to cough as if his chest were full. Castiel had said it was because he’d ‘depleted’ himself, and the ache in his chest was just how his human body was manifesting the strain on his grace and soul, but Dean still thought it was the onset of the flu. He hadn’t been as diligent with the tissues and hand washing of late, it would just be his luck.

Bobby’s kitchen was different. BRIGHTER. Dean blinked in surprise and peered up at the light fixture on the ceiling. The glass saucer of a globe was different. Same pattern painted on the glass, same shape and size, but the wrong color.

“Hey, what happened there?” He pointed up.

Ellen snorted from where she was rinsing her mug; “He washed it.”

“Oh, my god,” Dean balked at it; “It was just dirty? I—I thought it was supposed to be yellow.”

“Nope!”

Dean felt a mild creeping disgust prickle the back of his neck. He still remembered Bobby commenting on the kitchen countertops after Dean had scrubbed them, that he didn’t remember them having that pattern on them. He shivered and went for the stairs, found them gleaming, the faint scent of citrus wood polish lingering in the hallways. “Did he do this too?”

“Yup!” Ellen opened a cupboard and shut it again. “Soup and sandwiches OK? Or do you want left overs?”

“Depends on what’s left over,” Dean picked his steps carefully, peered into each room as he passed it and found the place strangely—and alarmingly clean in places it usually wasn’t. “Holy shit, Bobby,” He muttered and cracked open the door to the guest room, braced himself before he clicked the light on and froze at what he saw.

Everything looked pretty much the same, but there were no dusty cobwebs in the corners, no grayed patches on the window.

The room smelled of Pine-sol and laundry detergent and when Dean poked cautiously at the pillow on his bed he found it suspiciously soft to the touch, no more musty smelling old-as-dirt feathers that held the faint scent of his head.

“I’ve got chicken-broccoli-rice-and cheese casserole, and fixings," Ellen called from the bottom of the stairs.  


“That’s it?”

“That’s it unless you want cream of celery.”

“Ugh—I’ll take the casserole,” Dean put his bag down and glanced at his watch, took a moment to stop by the bathroom before he went back downstairs. Peered at the grout of the tile and found it cleaner than he’d ever seen it—even the frickin’ toilet seat had been cleaned—if not outright replaced. “Well, damn.”

Ellen had the Tupperware containers already setting out on the countertop with a fork and plate ready, but Dean bypassed them, put the bowl in the microwave and sat down with it and a fork at the table.

Ellen peered at him curiously, mouth opening but Dean beat her to it.

“It’s easier if you don’t say anything… Like, talk about something else, but don’t mention it,” He pushed another forkful between his lips, eyes locked on the salt and pepper shakers and the grains of uncooked rice he could see at the bottom of each.

Ellen’s teeth clicked her mouth shut so quickly, and after a deep breath for time she started talking; “Bobby’s thinking about building onto the house… For Sam. He’s been bitching about wanting his den back and I saw him working on plans the other day.”

Dean’s brows made friends with his hairline; “Really?”

“I know he’s just bitching to save face, but he knows Sam needs some privacy. Traipsing in and out of there at all hours is kind of wearing at him.”

Dean nodded; “What’s he got in mind?”

Ellen made a noise in the back of her throat, watched Dean take another bite and purposefully looked away; “Uh—Oh, he wants to knock out the wall by the bathroom back there and put a room in. Nothing fancy, but something Sam could shut himself up in if he wanted to… He’s getting to that stage I guess.”

Dean snorted; “What stage?”

“Anger… He’s getting pretty defensive if you try to help him with anything. I don’t know if it’s cabin fever, or if he’s pissy because he doesn’t feel good. And when he talks it’s always really direct, like he’s trying to shock us into silence.”

Dean nodded; “Yeah, he does that…” He took another bite; “He’ll get worse until he can’t take it anymore then he’ll have a good cry and everything’ll calm down.”

Ellen snorted; “You know him that well?”

Dean cocked a brow at her.

“Yeah, dumb question,” Ellen propped her head on her palm; “Well, what about you? What’s up?”

Dean shrugged, looked down at the food and then focused on his hands; “Not much. I’m pretty tired, but it’s my own fault… And I think I’m getting the flu—Had this weird cough the last few days.”

Ellen hummed, eyes narrowed; “Anything new I should know about?”

Dean tilted his head thoughtfully, “Not really.”

“Really?”

Dean scratched his nose. Took a few bites, then did it again, found himself scouring his nails against his throat and heat rising to his face.

Ellen tilted her chin down; “Dean—“

He dropped his fork into the bowl and pushed it back, arms crossed defensively over his chest. He didn’t look at her, not really—“Things…” He rubbed a hand over his head, found the words stilted and thick on his tongue; “Things got weird… with Cas.”

Ellen blinked and pursed her lips in thought; “What kind of weird are we talking about? Like, awkward morning after weird, or ‘I’m an emotionally constipated jackass’ kind of weird.”

Dean didn’t speak.

“Kid, I can’t help unless you talk.”

His mouth opened and closed. Talking had never really been his forte, well, maybe that was a lie. He just didn't like it, “We didn’t do anything. Really… It just—Am I really an emotionally constipated jackass?” He felt his face twist in discomfort.

“What did you say to him?”

“I didn’t say anything. He just—he left when I was trying to talk to him.”

Ellen blinked slowly; “He left? What were you trying to say?”

Dean shifted his feet against one another; “I don’t know… He’s not having much luck looking for God, so I—I was just gonna offer to help, yanno? And he looked at me weird then took off.”

“How did he look at you?”

“I don’t know—“ He rubbed his neck; “Like this—“ And made a stern expression, lips pursed and thinned, eyes narrowed.

“Are you sure he didn’t just pass gas?” Ellen wrinkled her nose. “Do angels do that? Pass gas?”

Dean rubbed the crease between his brows; “Forget it. He took off, big deal. He probably got a big celestial phone call or something, I don’t know. It’s dumb,” He picked up his fork and shoved a few spitefully large bites between his teeth.

Ellen worked her tongue at her teeth; “Okay, let me see the face one more time,” She crossed her arms and leaned forward a little.

Dean did it again, but the effect was lost because his cheeks were bulging with food.

Ellen shook her head; “Yeah, I’ve got no clue.”

Dean stabbed a cheese covered broccoli floret with his fork and chewed it up with a purposefully harsh snap of his teeth, snatched up the salt shaker and sprinkled salt over the vegetables. He understood why Castiel had gone, they were getting down to the wire here, if a way to stop Lucifer and Michael wasn’t discovered soon the world had no hope, but at the same time Dean felt betrayed. He hadn’t wanted Castiel to go. He didn’t want any of this to happen… If anything, he just wanted to crawl into bed under a nice toasty blanket and let himself be wrapped up by, and around Castiel until the end of time.

But that couldn’t happen. He had a responsibility here. He had to stop this shit before more people got hurt. He had to stop the devil from destroying the world because it was his fault this had started in the first place. If he'd just held out a little while longer none of this would have happened. As much as he wanted to blame Sam for letting Lucifer out of the cage, Dean was still the first step in that journey. The blame didn't rest entirely with his brother, it rested solidly between them.  


He shivered. He still pictured Lucifer in Sam’s skin, that crunching pop of breaking bone. The silence of it, the futility. He shivered, pushed the bowl of casserole away from himself and took a moment to breathe and ensure his stomach didn’t rebel.

“I’m tired, Ellen. I—I just want this bullshit to be over, yanno?”

Her head tilted in sympathy. She patted his hand from across the tabletop, “Yeah, I know.”

He poked at the casserole a few more times, but found he’d lost his appetite. Bowed his head between his arms and closed his eyes. He thought, maybe, he could go to sleep just sitting there.

Ellen was quiet for another thirty seconds or so, then her hand curled against the back of his head; “Dean?”

“Hmm?” He tilted his face out of the cave between his biceps but left his eyes closed.

Her breath hitched, as if she were about to speak, but the words didn’t come, instead there was the slash of headlights in the yard as Sam’s Prius pulled in, took up its spot to the side of the Impala and the moment was gone.

Jo came in first, smelling of popcorn and faintly of beer, and Dean could hear the airplane engine noise of Sam’s oxygen concentrator long before Sam himself appeared at the door.

He spoke evenly, but his eyes belied his relief. Dean saw it, felt the subtle tension ease in Sam’s shoulders as he bumped over the threshold and into the kitchen.

“Hey,” Sam lifted his chin and went directly to the fridge for a bottle of water, opened and took a drink while he gave Dean a long hard look, appraising him top to bottom; “You look like shit.”

Dean snorted. Sam looked—Well, he looked pretty good considering. More color in his cheeks, more muscle tone in his arms and chest. He had a new jacket, one of those fleece hooded things he was fond of years ago. This one was dark red with a shiny silver zipper, it was too big for his frame, seemed to pool around his waist, but Dean couldn’t begrudge him, knew it was more to camouflage the outlines of tubing and collection bags than any kind of fashion statement. He’d also splashed himself with a little more cologne than usual.

Dean lifted a brow; “Not a date?”

Sam’s face flushed; “Sure, a date with nine other people and their caregivers. Municipal building conference room; great atmosphere, really intimate, only smells a little like feet—You should try it,” He pressed his water bottle between his knees and with a single hard shove rolled into the den.

Dean rolled his eyes and pushed to his feet, left Ellen and Jo alone to talk about the movie.

Sputnik had rolled off her cushion and was standing with her front paws pressed into Sam’s shins letting his big hands scratch through her ruff.

Sam was grinning broadly, tone hushed as he spoke to the dog; “Hey girl! Look at you! Did’ja miss me?”

She lapped halfheartedly at his wrists and when Sam plucked up a tennis ball from its resting place by the mantle Sputnik wagged her tail but trotted back to her cushion and stretched out.

Sam looked disappointed, turned to narrow his eyes at Dean; “What’d you do?”

“What?” Dean eased himself down onto the couch; “I didn’t do anything.”

Sam motioned to the dog; “Look at her!”

“She’s tired!”

“No wonder! You need to lay off the chicken nuggets, she’s getting pudgy. Dogs aren’t supposed to look like loaves of bread with feet, Dean. She’s supposed to have this—this DOG shape, yanno?”

Dean felt insulted on Sputnik’s behalf; “She’s not pudgy! She—she’s fluffy.”

Sam pulled his chin toward his chest; “Fluffy?”

“Yeah, she’s fluffy.”

“She’s getting fat. Have you even been giving her kibble or just chicken nuggets and burger patties.”

Dean shifted uncomfortably; “She’s got the kibble—“

Sam let out an exasperated huff and rubbed his eyes; “She’ll wind up with dog-diabetes.”

“Dogs can get diabetes?”

“Please, promise me you won’t keep feeding her crap like that. They make dogfood for a reason.”

“Have you ever tasted dogfood, because I have, and let me tell you—“

Sam’s nose wrinkled up; “You’ve tasted dogfood?”

“Oh, like you haven’t!”

“No, I haven’t. It’s dogfood, you know… for dogs?”

Dean crossed his arms petulantly; “I’m not just feeding her people food! She hasn’t had nuggets in a week!”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Your face is hard to believe.”

Sam tilted his head to the side; “Really?”

“Shut up.”

0-0-0

The amulet remained cold.

Castiel pressed it between his hands, wrapped his grace around it, wore it—put it in his mouth to press against his soft palate, but there was no reaction.

After two days he became frantic, broke into a church and set up a ritual on the altar, waved the amulet through holy fire.

But it did nothing save singe the cord a little and burn Castiel’s non-physical hands. They would ache for days.

Castiel peered at his phone occasionally, but there were no calls. No messages. No sign at all that Dean missed him, or required his presence—or even just wanted to hear his voice.

Castiel longed for these things, but couldn’t press that button—couldn’t make that call. He wasn’t supposed to want things. He wasn’t supposed to CRAVE the touch of a hand. He wasn’t supposed to miss the hunter’s weight on the other side of the bed, or the warm flux of his grace.

Another day came and went, then, suddenly— the phone rang. For a moment Castiel didn’t know what to do with it, toss it? Smash it and make it shut up? He answered it, told himself he was being illogical, it was just the phone ringing, it was not omniscient, it was not vengeful or spiteful. It simply was because that was the way humanity had designed and built it to be.

Dean spoke cautiously, interspersed ‘Uh’s and ‘Uhmm’s throughout his speech frequently. He was sitting in the Impala outside of a burger joint, had just been released after his doctor’s appointment. He said he just wanted to check in on the whole ‘God-Hunt’. “Any news on the big guy?”

“Uhm—Just the usual… I’m still looking, if I had found him you would have been the second to know… After myself, because I would have found him—And likely the host, as they would rejoice… So, truthfully you would be third. To know that is.”

“Uh-huh… Well, uh—good luck I guess.”

Castiel listened to Dean breathe for a second, then forced the words out because something in his chest was quaking at the idea that Dean was about to hang up. He didn’t want him to hang up—not yet—“Dean?”

“Huh?”

“W-what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Uhm—Are you well?”

“I guess, the doctor said everything looked good… Uhm— still have to work on the food thing, but my electrolytes were level, they didn’t have to hook me up to an IV—thank fuck,” He swallowed noisily. “Took two nurses to get blood outta me though—Like they’d never seen a vein before… If they hadn’t got it when they did I was gonna do it myself… That dye bullshit though, Jesus—“ He shifted uncomfortably in his seat; “They said it’d make me feel ‘warm’, well, I wasn’t expecting THAT,” He chuckled nervously; “There’s only two reasons you asshole should ever feel hot. One; you’ve got the shits—and t—never mind,” He fell into a nervous silence. He cleared his throat; “Sam called Sputnik fat.”

Castiel blinked; “Why? She’s well within the normal weight range for her size.”

“He said I should lay off the chicken nuggets ‘cause she was lookin’ kind of pudgy,” Dean took a large bite of his food and muttered around it; “Screw’im. She’s not fat. She’s fluffy.”

Castiel felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward.

Dean hummed; “I—uh—I gained five pounds,” The ice in his cup rattled as he took a drink; “Still got a way to go before I’m back to normal, but…” He sighed; “It’s harder than you’d think.”

“You’re doing well though.”

Another hum, something warm like satisfaction bled into his voice; “Hey, uh— If… If you need some help with the whole God thing… All you gotta do is call. You know that, right?”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but I doubt there is anything you can add to the situation.”

Dean grunted; “Uh-huh…” He swallowed again, balled up his burger wrapper, “Well—I—I’ve gotta go. I’ll—Just let me know if you need anything.”

“Dean—“ But the line was already dead.

0-0-0

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0-0-0


	49. Fleeced

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once upon a time, there was an Elliedew who tended to promise chapters and then not deliver. This Elliedew was a very bad person who liked to torture Winchesters and Fallen Angels and deserved every bit of guilt that dripped from her pores. Then one morning, the Elliedew woke up earlier than she had to and discovered she had time and an internet connection to post that promised chapter. And she did. And it was good.
> 
> I hope.

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0

“Sam.”

The dream was already fading, even has he tried to cling to it. Something about warm waters and sandy beaches. Jess had been there, frolicking in the waves. She laughed and called out for him to join her, but the water was cold, so very cold.

“Sam, come on,” Something rattled, “Get up!”

Sam’s eyes popped open the beach was gone and instead Dean was leaning over him grinning broadly. Like a jackass.

“You’ve got gym this morning!”

Sam groaned and shoved his head away, with significant force, pulling his pillow over his face with the other hand. He grinned when he heard Dean stumble into the corner of Bobby’s desk with a muttered curse.

Dean came back and pulled the pillow away; “Up and att’em starshine!”

Sam pulled in a deep breath and let it out, “What’d you just call me?” He started his silent morning inventory. Numbness, check, immobility, check. Oxygen tube, check. Cough twice to clear his airway, double check.

“Come on, man! I wanna hit the buffet in town before your thing!” Dean already had the wheelchair unfolded, wheels locked and waiting by Sam’s bedside. “They’ve got fried apples and all you can eat bacon on Tuesdays!”

Sam blinked miserably up at the ceiling. Fuck. He levered himself up slowly and only gave Dean a half powered death glare as his brother threw the blankets off of him.

Sam practically snarled at him when Dean reached for his ankles and Dean backed off, hands up and kept talking, bent to look for Sputnik’s service vest under the couch. “I’m feelin’ it today. Stomach’s good, head’s good—I want PIE, Sammy!”

Sam heaved himself into the chair and made for the bathroom, oxygen cannula forgotten on the bed.

Dean peered after him but didn’t follow, picked up the hose and gave it a swing to express air when the machine gave a warning chirp, grinned and swung it again like a lasso over his head; “Maybe stop in for a trim? Your girlfriend working today?”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Sam said loudly enough that Dean could hear him. “Make yourself useful and get my pills.”

Dean snorted; “You got pills now too?” He gave up the search for the vest, swung the hose one last time and went to the kitchen, found three bottles lined up on a shelf near the window. He recognized one, Dean Smith had taken it, antidepressant, the second was a knockoff of Keflex, and the third was filled with tiny white pills the name of which he couldn’t pronounce. He shook all three out onto his palm and when Sam rolled into the kitchen he held them out with a glass of water; “Breakfast of Champions!”

Sam swallowed them with a glare sharp enough to cut steel and shoved Sputnik’s vest into Dean’s arms; “Found that behind the toilet.”

Dean blinked, confused and shook the vest out; “What was it doing in there?”

“Don’t know,” Sam shrugged on his jacket and zipped it up, “Couple of your shirts were back there too.”

Dean went to fetch them out, face scrunched and with a huff chucked them down the basement stairs toward the washing machine. “Smell funky anyway.”

Sam was already outside, swinging the keys to the Prius on his finger. Dean came out with Sputnik on her lead, watched as she waddled down the three stairs ahead of him. He didn’t admit it, but yeah, her vest was a little tighter than usual.

Sam hadn’t driven the Prius yet. Not since the hand controls had been installed. Dean had no idea why, Sam held onto the keys as if he were hoarding gold. But when it came to actually getting behind the wheel, he’d yet to try. It was actually kind of annoying. Dean hated the Prius. Not just because it was small and made him feel effeminate in an uncomfortable way, but because—well, he just fucking hated it. He’d driven Sam to his Thursday appointment the day after his own and sat in the damned car stewing and fighting with the radio trying to find something that wasn’t new age bullshit or hippie bullcrap. There were so many buttons and knobs and Dean didn’t really know which one did what until he’d already fiddled with half of them and suddenly was being assaulted by twangy guitars and heavily accented gospel music talking about the blood of the lamb and warsheeehhhhng uhweigh muh sins.

Sam laughed until he couldn’t breathe. Literally, and it had taken him a good fifteen minutes to get his wind back.

Dean did not want a repeat. He’d rather listen to Sam’s bullcrap hippie music than be subjected to THAT again.

“Why don’t you drive?” Dean said, giving the Prius a sneer; “That wheel thing gives me the creeps.”

Sam rolled his eyes, “Come on, man—“

“You either drive or we’re taking the Impala,” Dean pulled his keys from his pocket and bobbed his head to the side innocently.

“The Impala doesn’t have seatbelts.”

“And?”

Sam fidgeted. Actually fucking fidgeted, looked away and back and away again because he was ashamed at having looked away. His jaw tightened and with a huff he jerked the driver’s door open; “Fine.”

The next thirty minutes were some of the most harrowing of Dean’s life.

Apparently Sam hadn’t wanted to drive because he hadn’t mastered the hand controls yet, hadn’t retaught himself that acceleration was a squeeze on the wheel rail and the brake was the toggle on the right, the one on the left the clutch, the one below it the gearshift.

Dean hated it. After the second grinding of gears Sam hated it… Until they hit the highway.

Then something in Sam’s expression changed. “I’m driving.”

Dean eased his white knuckled grip on the arm rest; “If that’s what you wanna call it.”

Sam wetted his lips; “I just…” He gave his head a little shake; “You wouldn’t get it.”

Dean snorted; “Try me!” He glanced at his brother and with a sigh slouched a little further in the seat, “After this whole thing with my head, getting behind the wheel for the first time… It was like some of the stress and fear just vanished. It’s still like that… I’m still capable, even if I’ve gotta be careful. I can still do my job, yanno?”

Sam blinked at him; “Dean?”

“Hmm?” He met Sam’s stare.

“I—uh—I get why you left. I didn’t at first, not really, but I do now,” He flipped the signal light and coasted gently into the other lane, “I—“ He bared his teeth for a moment, struggling to find the right words; “I don’t know if I can go back to hunting like this.”

Dean felt an uncomfortable pull in his chest. Sam had to hunt. He had to! They were a team… “Why not?”

Sam spoke carefully, as if he’d been working through the words for days and had his speech all memorized. “I’m not as fast, I’m memorable—A guy in a wheelchair pulls people’s attention—And the world isn’t exactly wheelchair accessible—I mean, I have to go in through the basement of the municipal building with these two guys named Ryan and Chad just to get to group meetings—And the elevator in there is a piece of crap—Not to mention I can’t even get into places where there might be a case—One shove and I’m down a staircase or into a hole and you’re screwed for backup!”

Dean didn’t want to admit it, not at all—but Sam had a point.

“I want to be out there with you, OK? I get this pain in my gut every time you call thinking something’s wrong and I wasn’t there to help or save you—This demon you were after—Jesus—when you told me what it was I almost puked. I was afraid you’d lose it… But you didn’t. You and Cas were awesome!” He hesitated, “I think you and Cas should hunt together… I’ll—I’ll do what I’m good at—But, Dean—I- I just don’t think I can cut it anymore.”

Dean was quiet for a moment, breathed in and out; “Sam, if you want to hunt again we’ll find a way. I get that this is a big wrench in the works—believe me, I understand—but, man—if you want back in, we’ll work around this… Cas, yeah, Cas is handy in a scrap, but,” He sighed and scuffed a hand through his hair; “Man, I spend half the time worried something’s gonna hurt him—I know he’s an angel, but I just—I look at him and…” He turned to the window; “I get distracted.”

Sam glanced at him and back to the road a few times, checked his mirrors and made for the turn-off lane. “Dean… This thing with Castiel—Are you… Are you distracted by him because of Castiel… Or because of HIM?”

Dean’s mouth opened—flapped—and closed. He couldn’t meet Sam’s eyes and with a shake of his head turned his focus inward; “I don’t know.”

0-0-0

Sam’s therapist wasn’t in the office. His assistant, a man Dean’s age named Toby said Sam was free to do his ‘Repetitions’ on the equipment on his own if he wanted, while he helped an older women recovering from a double knee replacement up and down the platform stairs they had in one corner.

Dean followed, because Sam said he could in that voice that said; ‘Don’t leave me alone back there’.

The room smelled like disinfectant and lilac, Dean knew the scent because there was a lilac bush growing near the office end of Bobby’s garage. It was a big thing with some branches broken out of it by the previous winter’s snows, but the blooms were gigantic and made the whole area smell floral and peaceful over the engine oil and spilled fuel.

Dean took a seat on an elevated pad, thought he’d slept on motel mattresses harder than this thing and wedged himself against the wall, legs extended, ankles crossed, Sputnik at his hip. He scratched behind her ears while Sam went through his ‘Repititions’.

The first was stretches. Sam heaved himself onto the mat at Dean’s side and went through a series of poses. Lifted one leg over the top of the other and pulled his heel toward his crotch, then repeated it with the other leg. Dean tried it, curiously but couldn’t manage it, wound up with a stiff cramp in his inner thigh. Sam snorted in amusement.

The first machine after his stretches was simple, Sam hefted round weights to the back of it, one by one and stacked them on a peg, put a cotter pin through the top of the peg and circled to the front again, backed his chair into it and locked the wheels. It was rather ingenious, or so Dean thought. Sam pressed down on the hand grips and the weight lifted. He did this for a few minutes, took a break to stretch his arms and shoulders, and repeated it twice more, then moved on to another machine.

Most of it, Dean realized was weight training and stretches. Then Sam rolled himself halfway up a ramp and held the position without locking the wheels, backed himself down it and went up again, closer and closer to the top each time.

Toby came over after the older woman had left and for the last forty-five minutes of the ‘appointment’ he bent Sam into strange positions on a mat across the room and kneaded the muscles in his legs. Dean thought it was kind of weird, yeah he’d rubbed Sam’s back before, and Sam had rubbed his, but just MASSAGING a dude’s leg?

Dean understood why it was happening, knew it was to keep Sam’s muscles from atrophying too badly or becoming tight and stiff, but some of those positions looked like something out of porn!

Dean felt his face heating up just thinking about it and took Sputnik outside for some fresh air and to hopefully shake some of the growing unease from his body.

Sputnik paused at the edge of the parking lot and looked upward, let out a curious YAP and Dean peered upward as well—found the power lines at the edge of the parking lot lined with Starlings. Hundreds of them.

All quiet. All staring.

Sam came rolling outside a moment later, face dotted with sweat a bottle of water wedged between his thighs; “What’re you looking at?”

Dean motioned to the birds; “I’m getting some serious Alfred Hitchcock vibes.”

Sam blinked at them in surprise then narrowed his eyes; “It’s just a bunch of birds, maybe we’ll get some rain later… Come on, I’m starving.”

0-0-0

Sam ate three servings of bacon, pancakes and a bowl of fruit.

Dean stopped at two and supplemented his meal with two pieces of pie, one apple and one pecan, and a cup of coffee because he could—“Decaf,” He said as an addendum and Sam rolled his eyes.

Sam cleared his throat loudly when Dean tried to slip Sputnik a piece of toast and Dean stared right at him and did it anyway.

“Dog diabetes, Dean. She’s gonna get dog diabetes.”

“You look at that face and tell her no! Almost as bad as you.”

Sam rolled his eyes and dropped a few folded ones for a tip beside his juice glass.

Bobby was on the porch when they returned sweeping dust off into the yard. He spoke loudly as Dean climbed out; “You might as well get right back in there, I got something for you boys to look into.”

Dean turned and gave Sam a Look. One of his pointed, ‘We got work to do’ looks and Sam’s hands tightened on the wheel, his head gave a little shake and Dean turned back to the older man with a sigh;  
“Guess I’m solo, lay it on me.”

“Teenaged girl found dead by her employers, had her brains scratched out… Medical Examiner’s report speculated a wild animal, likely a wolf.”

Dean blinked; “A wolf?”

Bobby nodded and leaned on the railing to meet Dean’s eyes; “Her fingers were all tore up but there wasn’t a single sign of animal hair or tracks, and the kid she was babysittin’ didn’t hear a damned thing. Locked house, no foul play suspected.”

“What’re you thinking?” Dean shielded his eyes from the sun; “Sounds like it could be spirit activity.”

Bobby shrugged one shoulder toward his ear; “Honestly, I don’t know… I mean, I’ve heard of hobgoblins scratching people’s faces up, but this damned thing scratched into her brain. Hobgoblins ain’t that strong and if they hate folks they usually just burn the place down.”

Sam called out from inside the car; “Uh, Dean? You gonna give me a hand with this or not?”

Dean gave his head a shake and jogged to the driver’s side of the car, removed Sam’s chair from the back and unfolded it then went back to finish his conversation with Bobby.

Sam grumbled spitefully as he made his way up the ramp and inside, Sputnik trotting in his wake.

Bobby let out a sigh and lifted his cap long enough to give his scalp a scratch. “Well, that went tits up faster than I expected. Sorry, Dean.”

Dean lifted a brow; “Why?”

“I can see if I can find someone else to go with you on this, I don’t like the idea of sending you out again so soon after you got back.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time—“

“Yeah, but that was different then. You… I don’t like sending you out alone like this, incase something happens.”

Dean felt annoyance sweep through him like a storm gale. Didn’t Bobby think he could handle it on his own? He’d taken haunting cases alone before—been doing it for a while now. He’d handled a few on his own before Castiel found him again. He could handle it!

Even the doctors said everything looked good, all his tests had come back with good numbers, he—he wasn’t a danger anymore! Couldn’t anybody else see that?

“I can handle it alone. It’s not a big deal.”

Bobby nodded but didn’t exactly meet Dean’s eyes. “Let me get the details.”

Dean crossed his arms over his chest and went into the house looking for Sam, found him on the couch in the den doing something that required a lot of typing on the internet. Dean pushed the screen down, as if to shut it but Sam’s wrists were in the way.

“Look,” Dean said evenly; “I get it if you don’t want to go out, I do, but don’t hold back because you think you have to. If you wanna go, we’ll go. Don’t stay here if it’s not really what you want.”

Sam looked up, eyes somehow clearer than they had been minutes ago, his lips tightened and he nodded, spoke calmly—slowly; “I don’t want to go… I’m not ready.”

Dean opened his mouth to snap that of course Sam was ready—but he stopped himself. He stopped and took a deep breath instead. Trust… He had to trust Sam’s judgement here, even if he didn’t want to—even if the thought of going out alone again made his skin crawl and his stomach cramp. He didn’t like doing it alone—Didn’t like being alone because it left him too much time to think. “Are you sure? I mean—“ He stopped and bowed his head, took a breath and nodded; “I’d—“ The words felt like old peanut butter in his throat; “I’d like it if you came with me.”

Sam smirked; “You need some mood laxatives, I swear to Christ;” Sam inhaled deeply and let it out, removed his hands from the laptop and snapped it closed; “I don’t know if I can do it… I—I want to, alright? I don’t like the idea of you out there alone, especially with archangels breathing down our necks, but I—What if I fuck up and get you hurt? What if you get hurt and I can’t get to you because of this,” He pinched the flesh of his thigh rather savagely and Dean almost slapped his hand away but Sam released quickly and cupped that hand to his brow. “Dean if you got hurt because I couldn’t get to you—If something happened that I can’t prevent because I’m stuck in a goddamned wheelchair—I’d never forgive myself.”

“And what if something happens and you’re not there at all?” Dean dropped into a crouch and met his brother’s eyes; “I don’t know what’s going to happen, OK? But if you’re really not ready then I’m not going to force you to come with me—Hell, if you’re really not ready, or you’re that worried, I’ll ask Jo to come with me.”

Sam considered this for a moment and nodded; “You should… Ask Jo I mean. She’s got cabin fever so bad I swear it’s contagious! And If you need more backup… Well, I can drive,” He chuckled, seemed somehow pleased with himself. “I’ll get to you if I have to crawl.”

Dean looked at him for all of five seconds before a laugh spluttered out of his chest. Sam wheezed on his own and gave Dean’s shoulder a little shove; “Go on… I’m just a phone call away.”

0-0-0

Jo was excited. She hid it well, but Dean could feel it, see it in the grasshopper green of her color. She was not, however, enamored with the idea of having to wear a suit. She hemmed and hawed at the store, tried on a pencil skirt and heels, shuffled out of the dressing room to stare at herself in the mirror with an expression of barely contained rage. She settled on slacks and a pair of black running shoes that looked simple and downplayed enough to pass as formal if you didn’t pay too much attention.

It took her twenty minutes in Bobby’s bathroom and her mother’s help to get her hair piled up onto her head in something resembling a business casual bun, and another ten for her to put on makeup that didn’t make her look like a twenty-something. “Less is more!” Ellen said, “You can wear eyeshadow and liner all you want when you’re being you, but when you’re playing a fed you gotta look like a fed!”

Jo hated it, made disgusted sounds in the mirror; “I don’t look like I’m wearing any at all! My skin looks blotchy!”

“It’s called freckles, you get it from your daddy.”

“No, Dean has freckles, this—I’m spotted.”

Ellen swatted her behind to usher her out of the bathroom. Dean stared at her when she appeared, thought it looked somehow wrong—but at the same time weird because with downplayed makeup and in formal clothes Jo looked so much like her mother it was painful!

Bobby said she looked just fine, Jo wasn’t convinced. The suit, hair, and makeup Ellen had applied purposefully aged her. Made her wide eyes look narrowed and older, made her plush lips seem thinner. Suddenly she didn’t look like a twenty-three-year-old, but with the scowl on her face and a little creative use of Ellen’s rouge, she looked like a woman in her thirties.

“I hate you,” Jo said spitefully; “I hate you all.”

0-0-0

Alliance was a quaint little town, nigh picturesque. A Nebraska farming community not unlike the one Jo had grown up in.

“They’re all narrow minded, bible thumping, brunch eating, tea sipping, hypocrites.”

Dean snorted.

“They’ll spend their whole lives looking down their brown noses at everyone just a little bit different and gossiping about their sex lives behind one another’s backs,” She turned and gave Dean a look that was almost feverish; “What do you wanna bet someone’s got a sex dungeon?”

Dean coughed nervously and turned into the hospital parking lot. “I don’t wanna think about anybody with a sex dungeon.”

If you’ve seen one morgue, you’ve seen them all in Dean’s opinion. The morgue in the basement of Alliance General was generic, if in a severe need of upgrade. Glass partitions with shelves built in, bottles of embalming fluid and solvents and soaps lined up in neat compulsive rows.

Sputnik sighed tiredly and lowered herself to her belly at Dean’s heel.

Jo had her act down pat, took the lead as soon as the medical examiner appeared to greet them;

“Agents Joplin and Bonham, FBI.”

The medical examiner peered down at Sputnik and followed her lead to Dean’s wrist. “Uh—“

Dean’s mouth felt dry; “Ursula.”

Sputnik lifted her head and yawned.

The doctor gave them a funny look; “Didn’t you read the email about the autopsy report I sent out this morning?”

Dean’s jaw clenched, Jo’s opened and closed.

“We’re… experiencing some technical difficulties,” Dean said clearing his throat.

“Sunspots,” Jo put in helpfully.

“Solar flares?” The doctor gave his head a little shake, “I didn’t know we were having any,” He looked toward the ceiling and made a soft noise of surprise, “Well, anyway, I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

Dean tilted his chin upward; “It’s no trouble, but we are going to have to see the body. Nothing personal, but the bureau did deploy us and we have to have something to put into the report. They don’t look too kindly on mistakes like this, solar flares or no.”

The doctor nodded knowingly and motioned them back.

Jo gave Dean a damning look and he glared right back, mouthed the words; ‘Sunspots?’

Jo bared her teeth; ‘I panicked!’

Dean rolled his eyes and held the door open for her.

The morgue itself was plain, a room lined with shelves and drawers with a waist high table in the center complete with two sinks and a rain at the foot. It looked pretty much like every autopsy table Dean had seen on TV and while working.

The wall to the right of the door was made up of large drawers, like a filing cabinet for corpses. The doctor already had the girl’s open and was waiting for them.

Jo was at eye level with the side of the girl’s head when the doctor pulled the drape back. Her eyes widened a little, but her composure held.

Dean leaned away and took a moment to swallow before he could look back.

Dean cleared his throat, “The autopsy report you sent, uh—what did it say?”

The doctor blinked, brows up: “Oh—When they brought her in we thought she was attacked by a wolf or something,” He shifted back to the far side of the drawer and opened a small cardboard box by the corpse’s head, lifted out a biohazard baggie with something splintered and blue in it. “But I found this lodged in her temporal lobe—add to it the fragments of fingernail we found scattered amid the gray matter, cause of Death is self-inflicted.”

Dean took the baggie and stared at the contents, a chubby grinning lady bug made of dots just visible amid the gore and torn plastic; “Self-inflicted brain clawing… That’s a new one.”

Jo took the baggie with a grimace of disgust; “Is that even possible?”

The doctor snorted; “It’d take hours, and it’d hurt like hell… but it’s possible.”

“How?”

The doctor snorted; “Pick your acronym; OCD, PCP… It all spells crazy. My guess is it was some kind of phantom itch! I mean,” He pulled the sheet up over the girl’s face and pushed the drawer back in. “It’d have to be an extreme case, but…” He shrugged.

“What’s that?” Jo glanced up at Dean to gauge his reaction.

“Phantom itch is a psychological condition,” The doctor dusted his hands together and sidestepped toward the sink to wash them; “All it takes is someone talking about an itch, or thinking about one even and… Suddenly you can’t stop scratching! This would have to be a severe case—” he glanced back at the drawer, “—but it is possible.”

Jo scratched the back of her shin with the top of her shoe, Dean pulled at his ear as if trying to detach it, Sputnik yawned and nipped a flea on her shoulder.

Jo waited until they were in the stairwell before she started; “Okay, so this girl scratches her own brains out? How is this our kind of thing?”

Dean rubbed the back of his neck; “First we gotta talk to the family—the guy who found her and the boy. If it doesn’t sound weird, or we can’t find a connection, then it’s not and we hit the road.”

Jo fell into step beside him, mouth pursed; “Does this happen often? Checking something out only for it to Turned out be ordinary?”

Dean shrugged one shoulder toward his ear; “Not really. Happened once to me when I was twenty-two in Florida… This old house that’d been turned into an apartment building, classic haunting. Had a good story behind it too, previous owner of the house died in the lower bedroom—suffocated by her nurse. Cold spots, rustling in the walls, furniture moving, shadows, pet cat freaking out in the middle of the night for no reason. Turned out it was shitty duct work and a nine foot ball-python named Jinx that the upstairs neighbor forgot to mention had escaped from its enclosure,” He turned and gave Jo’s look of horror a wide eyed nod; “Oh, yeah. One thing my dad and me had in common—Hate snakes—HATE snakes.”

Jo nodded; “Yeah, I remember how you screamed when Sam chased you with that black snake.”

“I didn’t scream!”

“Yeah, you did—“

“I did not—“

“You totally did—”

“No—”

“—Like a GIRL!”

“Whatever.”

0-0-0

Jo wasn’t much of a people person. Especially when she had already expressed dislike of the townspeople. She was, however, god at acting.

“You’re Skully, I’m Mulder, got it?” Dean motioned between them while he connected Sputnik’s lead. “You gotta act like you care about these people or we’re in deep, OK?”

She rolled her eyes; “I know how to question witnesses. Probably better than you do.”

Dean chuckled derisively; “Sure, whatever you gotta tell yourself.”

“Oh, is that how we’re gonna play it!”

“Not playing it, that’s how it is.”

Jo worked her tongue at the back of her lower lip; “I bet you twenty bucks I can figure out what’s going on here before you.”

“I’m not making bets with you over the case.”

“Thirty.”

He shook his head and turned his back.

“Fifty!”

“You know what, make it a hundred and you got a deal,” He turned and grinned down at her.

“Done.”

“You’re goin’ down princess—“

“You just keep telling yourself that chilidog.”

“Chilidog?”

Jo nodded innocently and jogged up the front steps; “All sauce, no meat!”

“Now that’s just low—“

0-0-0

Jo got next to nothing out of the parents. Amber was a good kid, went to church, good home life, didn’t do drugs, kept Jimmy in line when they weren’t home.

“She was a sweet girl,” Christine said evenly. “I know Jimmy can be a handful, especially at his age, but she handled everything so well—“

Jo saw Dean step out of the room, saw the grin he threw at her over his shoulder and had to grind her teeth to keep from cursing audibly. He came back into the room a few minutes later sticking something into the inner pocket of his blazer, the grin had become smug and Jo wanted to throw her pencil at his stupid face.

He was still grinning when they left the house, pulled out the envelope from his pocket and displayed between two fingers like a TV magician would showcase your card after he miraculously pulled it from the deck; “Kid said he put this on the babysitter’s hairbrush.”

Jo wrinkled her nose; “What is this stuff?” She took the packet and turned it over, peered at the ingredients listed on the back; “Do you think this could have caused it?”

Dean snorted; “Not really, I mean—I put some of this stuff in Sam’s underwear a couple times… All it does is make you itchy, like a mosquito bite—not enough to itch your brains out, I mean—Maybe if she was allergic to it, but you saw her body—there would have been a rash or something,” his phone chirped and Dean fought with the pocket of his slacks for a moment to extricate it. Flipped it open and spoke.

Jo paused on the path and watched as he put the dog into the back seat, narrowed her eyes and put the packet away for safekeeping.

Dean was leaning one hand against the roof of the car talking quickly with the person on the other end of the line; “—You’re kidding… No—no, we’ll be right there,” He turned widened eyes to Jo; “Things just got weird.”

“Our kind of weird?”

“Our kind of weird.”

The ride back to the hospital was uneventful, they passed a couple kids on skateboards, and a teen on a bicycle with a grocery bag in the front basket.

The receptionist at the hospital was forthcoming, pointed them up to the third floor, east wing. Most of the doors were closed, and a strange smell permeated the air. Jo wrinkled her nose; “Smells like burnt hair—“And then she saw the orderlies bringing out the body bag and her teeth clicked.

“What happened?” Dean recognized the medical examiner, more by his hair than anything. He looked strangely worn, probably imagining all the paperwork, and or trouble this kind of thing would cause. Dead nurses never did go over well.

The medical examiner turned and gazed up at Dean with a sigh; “Guy got electrocuted.”

“How?”

“Maybe a loose wire, or a piece of equipment shorted out. So far we haven’t found anything.”

“Ay witnesses?”

The doctor nodded; “Yeah, guy in there. Mister Stanley. He says he saw it, but he’s not making a lick of sense,” He lowered his voice; “Long term care… Senile,” A sigh and a sad shake of his head at the old man sitting by the window.

“Has anything like this happened before?” Jo said. “Strange or unusual deaths?”

“I’ve been here twenty years and until this summer nothing weird like this ever happened. It’s like all the craziness we’ve managed to avoid over the decades is coming back at us tenfold.”

“You mean, like divine retribution?” Jo said innocently.

Dean elbowed her—she elbowed back.

The medical examiner blinked at her with one eyebrow raised; “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

Dean waved a hand, palm down in an attempt to lighten the darkening situation; “I think my partner means that sometimes, things like this can—uh—mishaps can appear a certain way and—uh—“

Jo tilted her chin up; “What he’s trying to say is; Sometimes feelings of guilt or jealousy can manifest themselves as subconscious carelessness, or spontaneous bouts of OCD. What can appear as divine intervention, can in truth, just be the human desire to be punished for wrongdoing.”

The doctor turned slowly and motioned after the orderlies pushing the gurney; “I knew that man. Carl Whitney. There wasn’t a kinder, more lighthearted man on this earth, and I—for one—don’t appreciate your insinuations,” He turned and walked away without another word.

Dean rubbed a hand over his head; “Hey, you need some new bait, Jo? Because you’re fishing at the wrong end of the pool,” He pushed past her into the room and spoke carefully, but loudly enough to get the older man’s attention. “Mister Stanley?”

The old man flinched; “It was just a joke… I didn’t know it would really work.”

Dean dropped into a crouch, “What would work?”

Mister Stanley turned, watery eyes wide behind his glasses, face pale and papery. He had a fine tremor as he lifted his hand, palm open to Dean and Jo; “All I did was shake his hand.”

0-0-0

“I wanna do it.”

“And if you get electrocuted your mom will kill me,” Dean said shrugging into a thick rubber apron.

“What if you get electrocuted?” She pulled a pair of goggles on over her head. “Sam would kill ME!”

“If I get electrocuted a fucking archangel will descend and resurrect me, so I’m kind of the only choice we got,” He tugged on a pair of electrician’s gloves and a set of welding goggles he’d had stuffed in the trunk; “You just stand back and document.”

“How?”

“I don’t know… Take pictures or something!” Dean breathed in deeply and let it out, approached the motel table as if about to slap a sleeping lion, left hand and arm raised behind his back, stance low and wide like a fencer.

Jo nodded; “Okay, wait a minute,” She darted back to her blazer and pulled out her phone, “Okay, I’m recording!”

Dean turned and stared at her; “You’re recording—“

“Just hurry up! People are dying you asshole!”

Dean set his jaw, flipped the blinder down on his goggles, and turned back to the ham.

It made a noise much like a lightsaber Dean thought. He could feel the heat growing through the glove, could feel the crackle and pop of electricity and smell the sweet cloying aroma of cooking flesh. It smelled like a diner on Sunday.

Six seconds.

Six. Seconds.

Dean pulled his hand back with a grunt, waving the glove because he feared it was melting, but there was only the slightest bit of moisture on the rubber and the heat that had reached through it faded in seconds.

Jo ‘s mouth was hanging open, “Oh, my god.”

Dean carefully removed the gloves and sat them aside, as far from himself as he could and shucked the goggles from his head; “You recorded it?” He pointed with his eyes wide; “You recorded that?”

Jo nodded dumbly. “Oh, my god.”

“Send that to Sam, he’s gotta see that shit!”

Jo’s mouth opened and closed; “Did that thing just cook a twenty pound ham in six seconds?”

Dean flipped open his pocket knife and slid the blade in to the thickest portion of the ham; “Hell yeah it did,” He carved a piece away and curiously—before he could even think about it—popped it into his mouth; “Oh, holy shit—“ He carved off another piece and held it up; “You gotta try this.”

Jo took it, phone still in her hands. A giggle; “Tastes better than my mom’s.”

Dean snorted.

Jo tore off another piece and went to let Sputnik out of the bathroom, bent and let the dog take the chunk of meat then went back for more herself. “That’s good ham.”

0-0-0

Sam got the video about thirty minutes after Jo sent the email. He was alone in the house, Ellen having gone into town for groceries, Bobby attending a police auction three counties over.

There was Dean dressed up like a mad scientist standing over a ham large enough to feed a family.

“Okay, I’m recording.”

The camera wobbled a little.

Dean wrinkled his nose; “You’re recording?”

“Just hurry up! People are dying you asshole!” Jo scoffed and muttered; ‘Jesus’ under her breath.

Dean set his jaw, flipped the blinder down on his goggles, and turned back to the ham.

He approached it cautiously, in a samurai stance, or like he was going to mantis kick the thing off the table, then tilted his chin up—nose wrinkled—and plopped one hand against the thickest part of the ham.

It sizzled.

It popped.

It cooked in under seven seconds. 

Jo sucked in a sharp breath; “Oh, my god.”

Dean pulled his hand back and shook it a little then turned and pointed at the ham with a look of glee on his face. Sam hadn’t seen him that happy in a long time; “You recorded it? You recorded that?”

Jo sounded mystified. “Oh, my god.”

“Send that to Sam, he’s gotta see that shit!”

“Did that thing just cook a twenty pound ham in six seconds?”

Dean turned to grin at her and got halfway through a chuckle when the video ended.

Sam watched it again, and again; “Restless spirit my ass!”

0-0-0

“We should do pulled pork—holy shit. I can make coleslaw. I’ve got my mom’s recipe memorized,” Jo had a paper hotel cup filled with chunks of meat and was eating as they drove, every so often handed a sliver back to Sputnik when Dean wasn’t looking; “We have to do pulled pork sandwiches.”

“It’s not a pork loin. And since when do you like coleslaw on pulled pork?”

Jo held up a chunk of meat; “This is the most tender, juicy thing I’ve ever had in my mouth. I am going to slather it in barbecue sauce and eat it with onion and coleslaw on a bun, do you understand me?”

Dean cocked an eyebrow at her.

She sneered; “Just for that I’m not sharing.”

The Conjurarium was set in the bottom level of a squat brick building, above which looked to be storage or apartments. One of which had a blinking neon eye and advertised ‘palm readings, love, money; Madam Posey’

Jo snorted at it; “Is this for real?”

Dean looked up, “Probably not,” He cleared his throat and stole a piece of meat from Jo’s cup then went for the shop’s door before she could kick him.

It was a cute shop in Jo’s opinion, she got carnival magician vibes from all the red velour and golden tassels. There were glass cases with antique magician garb displayed in them. Photos in black and white, old carnival posters in frames on the walls—a black satin curtain in the back left corner that could have possibly lead to an adult novelty section.

The room smelled of incense and dust and there didn’t seem to be anyone in there.

A wide cleared section in front of a squat narrow stage made Jo think of birthday parties with chubby half drunk magicians with suffocating doves in their sleeves.

Dean chuckled and cleared his throat to get her attention, showcased a whoopee cushion and pressed the tip of his tongue between his teeth.

“Welcome to the Conjurarium. Sanctum of magic and mystery,” The guy couldn’t have looked more bored if he’d been made of wood.

Sputnik yapped at him and the guy looked down and growled at her.

Jo lifted her brows and gave Dean a questioning, disturbed look.

Dean rubbed his cheek; “You the owner?”

“Yep,” Guy stuffed his hands into his pockets and Dean caught sight of the vintage Sigfreid and Roy t-shirt, complete with the white tigers and matching shirts.

“Sold any itching powder and joy-buzzers lately?”

He scoffed; “Yeah, a grand total of one of each. They aren’t exactly big ticket items,” He drummed his fingers on the counter and gave Jo a smile; “You folks here to buy something?”

Dean twitched a little, as if shocked and tossed his whoppie cushion on the counter—Jo followed it with a pack of inking gum and an innocent shrug.

“You get many customers here?” Jo said smiling back.

The man’s cheeks flushed and he took the five Dean handed him with shaking hands; “Uh— Kids come in. They don’t buy much, but they’re more’n happy to break stuff.”

Dean took his change and folded it back into his pocket.

“That’s so sad,” Jo leaned her elbows on the counter. “Cute shop like this.”

The man shuffled his feet; “Yeah, well, kids these days… They don’t appreciate things. There’s hardly any mystery to the world anymore… All they care about’s their iPhones and those kissing vampire movies.”

Dean gave Jo a long look from the corner of his eye, could feel the tension of the room growing.

Cursed objects. They’d decided it was cursed objects—there was no way he was going to let Jo win this!

“Just makes you angry, doesn’t it,” Dean put in, ignored the scuff of Jo’s shoe against his shin.

The guy nodded, mouth thinning; “Yeah, I am angry,” He took a steadying breath; “This shop has been my livelihood for twenty years and now it’s just wasting away to nothing… The comic book shop down the street went out of business two years ago, guess what they put in? A Starbucks. And last April the book store on Third that I went to as a kid with my folks got bought out by a chain—they tore the whole building down and guess what’s there now! A computer store. Two more shops on this street went down before the forth of July and I could be next! Kids today—you just—they don’t appreciate anything, nobody does. They just want it NOWNOWNOW!” He chopped his hand against the countertop hard enough that a container of chattering teeth started rattling weakly. “It just makes you sick!”

“Which is why you hate them?”

The guy took a deep breath, “I suppose.”

Dean turned and winked at Jo; “You wish there was something you could do about it.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“So you’re taking revenge?”

Dean reached into his pocket for the joy buzzer but Jo was already leaning over the counter, had slapped a rubber chicken down and stabbed the probe of the joy buzzer into it.

The guy yelled and stumbled backward, tripped over a box of wax lips and landed with a thud on the steps of his stage, eyes wide, gripping his chest, shaking, face twitching in shock.

Dean swallowed nervously and Jo made a sound in her throat; “Uh-oh…”

“Yeah, Uh—Sorry… We…” Dean cleared his throat and put two dollars back onto the counter, trying to avoid the smoking mess of the rubber chicken’s remains; “Yeah, we’ll let ourselves out.”

Jo bent and lifted Sputnik to her chest, steps quickening with each foot forward until she and Dean were practically running. The Impala’s tires screeched against the pavement.

“Well,” Jo said, “That was a bust.”

0-0-0

Jo did make damned good coleslaw. Dean claimed it wasn’t as good as Ellen’s just to piss her off, but it was.

“You got a fridge in your room?” Dean said around his sandwich.

“No,” She shook her head, swallowed with the help of a swing of beer. “How much can we give the dog before she starts farting?”

Dean craned his neck to see around the foot of the bed and caught a glimpse of the end of Sputnik’s feet and tail where she was asleep on her cushion. “I think she’s in a ham coma the way it is,” He pressed a fist to his sternum; “And I’m not far away.”

“Lightweight,” Jo snorted.

Dean’s phone started ringing again and with a grunt he tilted his chair back onto its rear legs and fished it out, unfastened his belt for a little extra room and reached for a third bottle of beer. “Yeah?”

“Hey, Dean.”

“Sammy!” Dean stretched, “Did you get the video?”

“Uh… About that. Can—can you look outside?”

“What?” Dean rubbed his stomach and pushed to his feet, shoes scuffing against the grungy carpet. He peered out between the curtains; “What am I… Oh.”

Sam waved from the front seat of the Prius, his expression pinched. “Hi. The machine battery died about thirty miles back so I… I could use a hand.”

Dean ended the call and yanked open the door with a curse, stomped over to the Prius and threw open the door; “You couldn’t have called? Ellen and Bobby let you come alone?”

Jo stuck her head out the door, two bites into her second sandwich; “Heya, Sam!” She waved.

He waved back, lips pale and didn’t complain when Dean yanked the passenger door open and pulled out the wheelchair. “Uh… I left a note, they don’t—don’t exactly know I came… Well, if they do they haven’t called yet.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dean rubbed his forehead, “So, what? You wedged yourself in there without help?”

“Yeah,” Sam popped open his door and had to take three or four wheezing breaths before he could even begin to heave himself out. “You’re not after a s-spirit. It’s gotta be a wi—“

“Yeah, we’re working on that," Dean plopped the concentrator into Sam’s lap and started pushing him toward the hotel door. “I think we gave the joke shop owner a heart attack this morning.”

Jo had pushed their bags out of the way and had a glass of water waiting, handed it over to Sam as Dean came into the room and watched as the younger Winchester gulped it down.

“Why’d your battery die so soon? Isn’t it supposed to be good for like, twelve hours?”

“Nine,” Sam took a long deep breath as soon as the machine was plugged in again and had started running. “But I had therapy yesterday and forgot to plug it in afterward.”

Jo nodded, “Want a sandwich?”

Sam eyed the ham warily; “Uh… Is it safe?”

Jo shrugged; “We’ve been eating it all day.”

Sam looked mildly nauseated and shook his head; “No… No, I’m good.”

“Suit yourself.”

Sam developed a headache, wound up sprawled on Dean’s bed with a cold towel over his eyes muttering suggestions while Dean and Jo sat on opposite sides of the room with their respective laptops.

“It looks like the weirdness started back in June,” Jo said, “Newspaper ran a story about it. A man literally coughed up a lung in the grocery store… And in mid-August there was an eleven-year-old with a wad of chewing gum in her stomach the size of a softball. It had to be surgically removed, her parents sued the gum company.”

“It’s like the whole town is cursed,” Sam lifted the cloth away from his eyes and refolded it, “Just bizarre things—impossible things with no connection.”

“What’re you thinking?” Dean picked at the ham fitfully.

Sam shrugged; “No, I think you guys hit it on the head. I think it’s a witch. Just need to find the center of the crazy.”

Dean nodded, “I can get a town map and ask around. See if anyone’s acting different lately.”

Jo nodded; “I’ll stick around here,” She bobbed her head toward Sam. “You should check into that book store the joke shop guy was talking about. He said it’d been around since before he was born.”

Dean nodded and called to Sputnik, she just lifted her head and stared at him then laid back down with a sigh.

“Sputs, come on,” He snapped his fingers a few times. “Let’s go.”

She stretched her legs tiredly, straining—and yawned.

Sam peeked out from under his washcloth and met Dean’s gaze; “Yeah, only kibble. Right.”

“Shut up,” And Dean left without her.

0-0-0

The book store had belonged to a woman named Briana Coffey. She’d lived in the suburbs, two streets away from the house where Amber had scratched her brains out. She’d also died four months earlier from advance stage lung cancer. Her grandniece, who’d helped run the store, was her only surviving relative. Victoria was in her forties, liked wine and Pomeranians, and admitted, quite openly to being a witch.

“Wiccan,” She said with a wave of one thin hand. “It’s been a passion of mine for years now.”

Dean shifted uncomfortably on one of her small wing backed chairs; “So, you… you do spells and curses and stuff?”

“Spells, yes. Curses, no. I don’t perform rituals or spells of a selfish nature,” She motioned to a delicate wood carving hanging above her door; “Mantra and motto.”

Dean turned and stared at it, ‘Harm None’. He turned back to her with a dry mouth, uncertain exactly what this woman knew about the supernatural, or what she didn’t. There were some wiccans who were aware, and others—Paper Wiccans as Dean had called them once, who only had their books, no actual POWER. Looking around the woman’s home with his eyes narrowed and grace bubbling in his chest he didn’t see a damned thing in her house that rang of Power except a wind chime hanging on her porch. When he asked about it she smiled kindly; “Community Rummage Sale. A weakness of mine… It just called out to me, you know.”

Dean nodded, “Yeah, I get that.”

0-0-0

“Dean. Dean, wake up, your phone’s ringing.”

Dean didn’t want to wake up. He didn’t want to move—he wasn’t even sure he wanted to be alive. “Aw, shit—“ He rolled off the edge of the bed slowly, onto his hands and knees, head bowed.

“Dean? What’s wrong?”

“My stomach—Aw fuck—“ He pressed his face into the carpet and tried to breathe. He crawled slowly toward the bathroom; “Don’t judge me… It was fucking awesome ham— Aw hell.“

Sam called out to him again; “Dean? DEAN! Come on—YourPHONE!”

“My intestines,” He kicked the door closed behind himself.

The phone eventually stopped ringing but it started again a moment later. Sam slapped around on the side table until he found his own and dialed Jo’s number, got a similar reply as the one he’d got from Dean.

“What?” Jo sounded miserable.

“Dean’s sick.”

“I’m not sick!” He sounded sick.

Jo groaned; “We ate close to seven pounds of ham apiece… I didn’t think Mom was right about the meat sweats thing, but she was.”

Sam’s face contorted; “Wait—are—are you on the toilet right now?”

The pause was just half a second too long; “No.”

“Aw—Gross… Look, just—When you’re done—Dean’s phone is ringing. He’s sick—“

“I’m not sick!”

“—and I can’t get to it because somebody had the bright idea to put my chair on the other side of the room.”

Dean’s phone went quiet and thankfully, didn’t start ringing again.

Jo made a whining sound; “I think I’m gonna go vegetarian.”

Sam snorted, half a second later Jo’s phone made a beeping noise.

“Hold on,” She said and the line went silent.

Sam lay there listening to Dean mutter in misery for close to three minutes before Jo’s line clicked back over. Her voice was clearer, less pained and more worried; “Sam?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell Dean to suit up, we’ve got a live one.”

“What? What happened?”

“Thirty-five-year-old male attacked in his bed. Locked house, no signs of forced entry, alarms didn’t go off.”

“Something tried to scratch his brains out?”

“No… Something pulled every single one of his teeth out.”

0-0-0

“The tooth fairy,” Sam said, chin dropped to his chest. “Guy was attacked by—by the tooth fairy.”

“Left him thirty-two quarters under his pillow,” Dean was sprawled over his bed still rubbing at his stomach. Jo was sitting at the kitchen table staring at the ham in something like disgust mixed with lust, crunching rolaids like M&M’s.

Sputnik waddled into the kitchen and sat at Jo’s heel, tail wagging excitedly. Jo scoffed and lifted the tray of ham off the table, as if to set it in the floor for the dog; “Knock yourself out—“

“HEY!” Dean snapped his fingers in Jo’s direction; “Not the whole thing! It’s not even lunch time yet!”

“Dude!” Sam wrinkled his nose; “It’s been sitting out all night.”

“So? It’s a good ham, Sam. A damned good ham.”

“Yeah, you’re cut off.”

“But I was gonna get Muenster—“

“Dean!” Sam’s eyes widened; “You were on the toilet for an hour and a half this morning!”

“I’m eating! Are you really gonna deny me food when I’m actually eating and keeping it down?”

Sam rolled his eyes; “Fine, get food poisoning,” He shook out the town map. “What else did you find out?”

“Well,” Dean sat up slowly, “There’s a couple kids admitted for ulcers… They said they got ‘em by mixing poprocks and coke… And a guy whose face froze like that.”

“Like what?"

Dean and Jo had a silent conversation with widened eyes, wrinkled noses, and pointed fingers.

“Uh, guys?” Sam smiled nervously.

Dean rolled his eyes and let out an explosive breath, then turned to Sam and made an ugly face with his fingers caught in the corners of his lips and his eyes crossed.

Sam’s eyebrows made friends with his hairline; “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Dean quickly released his mouth and rubbed his cheeks, glanced at Jo uncomfortably; “He held it too long and it… stuck.”

Sam dropped his pen; “Okay, this—this is insanity. What the hell is going on here! Did—did Sabrina the teenaged witch grow a dark side? I mean, come on!” He motioned to the list he’d made of ‘weirdness’. “We’ve got a guy whose smoked for thirty years LITERALLY coughing up a lung, a girl with a three pound gumball in her stomach, poprocks and coke times three, a guy with a frozen face, and a girl scratching her brains out because of itching powder—“

“Don’t forget the joy buzzer,” Jo said, motioning to the ham. “If we can’t figure that one out we should sell them on QVC, it’d knock the George Foreman Grill right off the air.”

Sam motioned to her with the flat of his hand; “This—this is all stupid!”

Dean grunted, eyes distant; “Sea Monkeys.”

“What?” Sam turned and stared at him.

Dean shrugged; “I used to believe in Sea Monkeys.”

“What are you talking about?” Jo said, picking off a sliver of ham and feeding it to the dog.

Sam rubbed his brow; “Dean, Sea Monkeys are just brine shrimp. They’re real.”

Dean shook a hand out in front of himself; “No, I mean like in the ads; The Sea Monkey wife would cook a pot roast for the Sea Monkey Husband, and the Sea Monkey Kids would play with the dog in the Sea Monkey Castle. I was six, but I believed it was real.”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Jo said, propping her chin on her hand.

“Well,” Dean rubbed the edges of his lips; “What if that’s the connection. Smoker coughed up a lung—How many times have you heard someone coughing and thought ‘damn, they’re gonna hack up a lung!’ All of this—all of it sounds like things kids would believe… Like, ‘Don’t swallow your gum or it’ll take seven years to go through your stomach’ or ‘don’t mix pop-rocks and coke, it’ll give you an ulcer’. Yanno? ‘Stop making that face or it’ll freeze that way!’ The goddamn tooth fairy. All of them are lies that kids believe.”

Sam tapped his pencil on the desk; “Okay, so whatever’s doing this is reshaping reality. It has the powers of a god—“ His eyes rolled; “Or a trickster.”

“Yeah, with the sense of humor of a nine-year-old.”

Sam pursed his lips, eyebrows lifting emphatically; “Or you.”

Jo snorted through a laugh.

“Oh, like you’re any better,” Dean threw himself back against the pillows.

“I’ll have you know I have a mature and sophisticated sense of humor,” Jo shook a slice of pork at him. “Fat guys falling down is hilarious.”

Sam cupped one hand around his eyes; “Oh, god there’s two of them,” And continued plotting the weirdness on the town map.

It took about twenty minutes, long enough for Dean to doze off and start dreaming about antacids, then Sam shook him awake by the foot.

“Hey,” He shook Dean’s leg again; “Take a look at this.”

Dean sat up slowly rubbing his face, found Sputnik sprawled out at his hip nosing at her towel.

Sam spread the map out on the end of the bed and motioned to little red hatch marks; “Tooth fairy was here… Poprocks and Coke was here, then you’ve got, itching powder, face freeze, and joy buzzer. All located within a two-mile radius.”

Dean took the map and stared at it, “So, we’ve got a blast zone of weird, and inside it; fantasy becomes reality.”

“Pretty much.”

Dean rubbed his face and glanced around the room; “Where’s Jo?”

Sam cleared his throat; “She –uh—She went back to her room.”

“Did she take the ham?”

“No, I took the ham. You two are gonna wind up with worms.”

Sputnik whined from the bed and gave Sam a hurt look, as if she could understand him, rubbing her snout with her paw.

Dean practically pouted; “We’re getting’ another one before we deal with this. Seriously, Sam. Best ham I’ve had in my life!”

Sam rolled his eyes; “Sure, whatever. Now, back to the reality-warping-monster.”

“Okay, okay…” Dean blinked rapidly to clear his eyes and focused down at the map. “So, what’s the A-bomb at the center?”

“Four acres of farm land and a house.”

Dean scratched the back of his neck and hunched over his stomach; “Our hotel isn’t in that two-mile radius, is it?”

Sam blinked curiously at the map; “Yeah, it is. Why? You alright?”

Dean’s stomach made an ominous rumbling noise and he rolled across the bed toward the bathroom; “I think I know what Jo’s doin’… Give me five minutes and we’ll go check out that house…” He paused, fingers drumming on the door jamb; “Better make that ten.”

0-0-0

Sam didn’t like the back seat. Liked it even less with his wheelchair shoved in next to him and Sputnik sprawled against his leg, her swollen belly up. She looked like a bloated, furry pig.

Jo didn’t want to get out of the car, but there wasn’t a way for Sam to get onto the porch, so she didn’t have much of a choice.

Sam watched them go, saw Dean crouch to pick the lock and the door open onto a small brown haired boy. He heard the soft buzz of conversation, felt his skin prickling and saw Dean making hand gestures.

They didn’t go into the house. In fact, they came back to the car quite quickly, Dean’s hands rubbing together, mouth pinched. He climbed into the car and started the engine, pulled away with a congenial wave to the kid watching out the window and waited until they were speeding past the hotel before he spoke.

“Hey, Dean—that—What’s wrong?” Sam motioned to the hotel as they passed it.

Dean’s jaw was tight, eyes straight ahead; “I don’t think that was a little boy… I mean—it looked like one, talked like one, but he felt off. He felt off and he didn’t really have color—It…” Dean curled his fingers like he was holding an egg and made a gesture at the top of his head; “He had crowns, Sam.”

“Crowns?” Jo said curiously, “He had a crown?”

“No, CROWNS…” Dean cleared his throat; “I… I think that kid was a demon.”

Sam almost choked. “You think that kid was possessed?”

“No,” Dean shook his head, rubbed the spot between his brows; “It… It was like he had a soul, OK. He was kind of purple… But there was black, like… like INSIDE. Not in the way a person whose possessed is. No, this was like his soul was part demon… I don’t—“

“What’s a crown?” Jo insisted.

“Demon lore,” Dean’s voice was shaking. “You can only see them at certain times, or when the demon is particularly powerful… It’s a spot of hellfire that just—just exists as part of them. Not all demons have them, in fact I’ve only seen two that do.”

Sam swallowed a lump in his throat. “Alistair.”

Dean met his eyes in the rear view mirror; “And Lilith.”

Jo turned her eyes to the road again; “So what now?”

“Now? We get you outta here.”

“What?” Jo’s voice rose; “Oh, no! You’re not kicking me to the curb now, no way!”

“I’m not kicking you to the curb, I don’t want you to get hurt!”

“Dean,” Sam tried to remain calm, to counteract the shouting match he could feel brewing, but Dean and Jo were already locking talons.

“I’m not helpless, Winchester! You think this is the first demon I’ve gone up against?”

“I’m not letting you get in the middle of this—“

“DEAN!”

Everything went quiet.

Sam took a deep breath and lowered his voice; “You said the kid wasn’t possessed.”

“No.”

“How much black was there?”

“What?”

“How much black was there?”

Dean sighed; “Enough.”

“More than me?”

Jo turned to stare at him.

“Sam—“

“Was there more than me?”

“No… No, there wasn’t.”

“Then, did you stop to think maybe the kid’s just obsessed like I was?”

Dean stopped at an intersection and propped his elbow on the window’s edge.

“What if he’s just a normal kid who was obsessed? What if he doesn’t know he’s doing these things? What if you’re damning him because he’s not exactly normal.”

Dean let out a huff of a breath and picked at the steering wheel cover.

“You’re jumping to conclusions… We need to figure out what exactly is going on before we call in the cavalry, OK?”

Dean nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“Thank you,” Sam gave his head a shake; “What’s the kid’s name?”

“Turner, Jesse Turner.”

“Okay, we’ll start there… Take me to the city archives.”

0-0-0

City archives. City hospital. City courthouse. It was nearly dark by the time Sam found it, came rolling out of the courthouse with a file wedged into the seat at his hip and another stuffed hastily under his left leg.

Jo climbed out and took the wheelchair, folded it and put it in on the rear passenger side, then turned in the seat to look at Sam while he spoke and Dean maneuvered out of the parking lot.

“Well, Jesse Turner is about as average as you can get. B-student, won last year’s Pinewood Derby. But, get this!” Sam was grinning broadly; “Jesse’s adopted… And his birth records are sealed.”

Jo sighed and turned to Dean. Dean just grinned;

“So you unsealed them and?”

Sam tried to flatten the wrinkles in the page he’d stuffed under his leg; “There’s no father listed, but his biological mother is named Julia Wright. She lives in Elk Creek, on the other side of the state.”

Dean took a deep breath and shifted his hips against the seat; “I’m gonna need coffee… Lots of coffee.”

0-0-0

Elk Creek was much like Alliance, small, seemingly untouched. Julia Wright lived in a small chipped white house amid an overgrown yard behind spike tipped iron fences and hand painted ‘No Trespassing’ signs. Nine of them in all.

The weeds in her yard were browning, as was common for Nebraska in August, dying spring flowers nothing but dried vining husks along the trellis and fence. Dandelions as tall as Dean’s thighs along the path covered in fuzzy white heads that clung to the fabric of his slacks as he and Jo made their way toward the door.

There was an active hornet’s nest clinging to the corner of the porch roof and Dean eyed the winged monstrosity perched at its mouth with a mix of fear and hatred.

He caught movement behind the blinds from the corner of his eye, heard the soft scuff of feet against floorboards. Circled to the back of the house and motioned for Jo to stay behind him. He’d seen too many horror movies, and was too paranoid of crazy humans with access to firearms.

The doorbell worked and half a breath later there was a shaky feminine voice from the other side; “Whatever you’re sellin’ I’m not interested!”

“Uh,” He cleared his throat; “We’re not salesmen, ma’am… Agents Bonham and Joplin, FBI,” He nudged Jo in the hip and she fumbled with her ID, held it up to the spy hole in the door.

The woman was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke again her voice was calmer; “Put your badge in the slot—Your partner’s too.”

Dean huffed in annoyance, but did as she asked. Heard the leather plop to the floor and the woman’s breathing as she opened and examined each one. It took a moment, but Dean felt it when it happened, tried to feed as much calm into the air around them as he could.

Lock after lock after lock clicked back and the door opened a crack.

Julia Wright was young, probably only a year or more older than Dean himself. Blonde with heavy dark circles under her eyes and a pale, bloodless look about her. She stood defensively, arms crossed, body curled away from them, eyes flicking from Jo to Dean and back again. She held out the badges, curiosity sated, and pulled her hand back a little too quick; “What do you want?”

Dean worked his tongue at the backs of his teeth; “We just had a few questions, about your son.”

She flinched, and took half a step back gripped the door with her nails digging into the wood; “I don’t have a son.”

“He was born March twenty-ninth, nineteen-ninety-eight. In Omaha, you put him up for adoption.”

Julia’s jaw twitched and she pulled her sweater tighter around her slight frame, scratched at the dirty roots of her hair. “What about him?”

Dean glanced at Jo and back to the woman; “We were just wondering… did anything unusual happen after he was born? Maybe something compelled you to give him up?”

Julia shifted her feet uncomfortably. “No… He was born and he went away. That’s it. Are we done here?”

And Jo spoke; “What about the pregnancy? Was it a normal pregnancy, or was there something strange?”

It was like watching Sputnik go from placid one minute, to snarling the next. No visible switch, just one instant Julia appeared slightly annoyed, the next her eyes were wide, pupils shrunk, teeth bared. “STAY AWAY FROM ME!”

Dean threw his hand into the door, just as it swung toward the jamb, caught it and lunged into the house, Jo tearing past him like an eel. Dean tripped on her dropped ID and went to his knees with a curse, lunged up again and followed. “Wait!”

The woman was just a streak, dodging around furniture, around the table—she picked up and threw a bowl of fruit at them, an orange caught Jo in the face but she bated it away.

The woman slid on a braided rug and swung herself into a pantry, throwing her slight weight against the door just as Jo caught the jamb.

Jo cried out and slammed her shoulder against the door in rage just as Dean made it to her. The door buckled inward and Julia screamed, grabbed a canister off the pantry shelf and swung it with an ear piercing shriek; “NO!”

Salt.

Course, angular grains of kosher salt.

Julia’s eyes widened and widened until they looked like they might fall out of her head. “You—“ Her chest heaved; “You’re not demons?”

Jo shook out her hand, pulled back her lips like maybe, just maybe she wanted to punch the woman, but Dean caught her arm. “Easy tiger…” He lifted a hand to Julia, fingers splayed, palm relaxed; “How do you know about demons?”

She blinked rapidly, mouth opening and closing; “How do YOU know? I thought you were FBI! N-nobody at the FBI would believe me—they said I was crazy, tried to have me institutionalized!”

Dean held both hands out to her; “Easy—take it easy… We… we’re not the—not the normal FBI.”

Jo was still gripping her injured fingers; “Ever watch the X-Files? We’re something like that.”

“Something…” Julia took a deep breath and let it out; “Something like that.”

“We just wanna talk, that’s it,” Dean said with a sigh.

“Okay,” Julia took a deep shaking breath, “Yeah, OK.”

0-0-0

Sam answered his phone on the third ring; “How’d it go?”

Dean let out a snort; “Riviting… Julia Wright was possessed the whole pregnancy. Conception to birth.”

Sam’s eyes widened and he shut his laptop. “How is she?”

“Is that a joke?”

“Sorry,” Sam cleared his throat; “We got another one.”

“Another one!”

“Yeah, fifteen-year-old with a watermelon plant growing in his intestines. Emergency appendectomy seems to have taken care of it. “

Dean took a deep breath and let it out.

“You’re gonna have to call Cas, Dean.”

“We can handle it without—“

“No, we can’t. How do we tell a ten-year-old that he’s got demon powers and he’s messing people’s lives up just for being a kid? Look, maybe Cas can put a cap on them, like Zechariah did to you. Or… maybe we can get him out of here, someplace safe where he won’t hurt anybody.”

“What, lock him in Bobby’s panic room until puberty?”

“No. He’s a kid!”

“Sam’s right you know,” Jo said softly; “We can’t handle this on our own.”

Dean sighed, “Fine… When we get back I’ll call Cas… How’s Sputnik?”

“Sleeping. She’s cuddled up to one of your t-shirts under the desk.”

“You doing OK?”

Sam hummed and looked around himself. “Water, food, entertainment, I’m good.”

“Just no lookin’ up porn on my computer, got it?”

Sam choked on a laugh; “I begged you for three years not to do that on mine and you did every time! Oh, you’re getting it. You deserve it!”

“Fine, but stay away from Latina Lovers dot org, unless you want VD,” Dean snorted, amused with himself. “Virtual Diseases.”

“Funny,” Sam said, unaffected. “I got some information on Jesse’s adoptive parents if you want it. But it’s all kind of boring. Cynthia works retail, David’s an EMT. Two mortgages, a couple parking tickets. Married twelve years, for whatever reason, they were unable to conceive. They went through an agency in Omaha and adopted Jesse when he was only two days old.”

Dean hummed, “Riveting.”

Sam chuffed; “Yeah, well, not much to do but figure out how to handle the situation, and we can’t do that without Cas.”

“Look, we’ll be back by three hopefully, you stay sane until then?”

“I'm fine, Dean," A sigh, "I think I’ve got our next case lined up if we can settle this by Monday.”

Dean tilted his chin toward his chest; “Our? So, what? You’re back?”

Sam inhaled deeply and let it out; “Yeah. Yeah I guess I’m back.”

0-0-0

Castiel had been driving for almost a week. He drove because he was too wary of his failing grace to trust it with transportation. Found himself randomly zigzagging up the west coast. Twice he came across another angel, but somehow managed to slip by them without being noticed. How, he didn’t know but it didn’t bode well. Either he was too far gone to be noticed, or they had orders to ignore him.

He was in Idaho when it happened. Just a flicker, not from the amulet, but from in his core. Not God, but something else: familiarity he couldn’t place because it was so vague and his grace so badly degraded. The presence didn’t linger, seemed to notice him in turn and vanished.

Castiel warded his truck and made for Texas, decided it would be easier to lose whoever was possibly following him if he gradually warded the truck heavier and heavier. Not having full use of his grace made Castiel very nervous, he felt not only blinded, but deaf and mute as well, as if half of his senses had been cut away. He was helpless by heaven’s standards. He could be pursued by an entire Flight and would never know it until it was too late.

Castiel parked on roadsides and in busy parking lots and tried to sleep, this body ached and craved it unnaturally, and though the body rested, HE did not. He found himself pulling back and hovering, watching the humans around him toil, watching how they interacted—or he spent that time immersed in his own memories, past and future, trying to figure out how they could prevent Michael and Lucifer from tearing the world apart.

Of all the doors he’d opened, he had yet to find even one that showed him a future where Michael and Lucifer did not set fire to the world, or destroy half its human population. He saw Dean and Sam slaughtered, saw them each say ‘yes’ in turn, followed by disaster.

He saw Dean broken and his soul shredded under Michael’s might.

He saw Sam burned out in a flash of Lucifer’s grace—his soul obliterated under the weight and intensity of the Morningstar’s hate.

He saw Dean’s soul burned away slowly—watched Michael and Zechariah battering him, feeding his guilt and self-hatred like a flame until Dean just gave up—SHATTERED, and was burned away like a cancerous lesion.

He saw Sam darkened by his brother’s sacrifice, willingly accepting Lucifer into himself and burning away the souls of everything he touched.

Castiel’s chest HURT and he tried to find a way to numb the pain of it. It wasn’t even a physical pain that he could disregard. It came from deep in his Heart and he couldn’t stand it. Rebelled, ROARED and tried to shred the potentialities where Dean was destroyed or Sam was destroyed, or they both were destroyed.

It was wrong—WRONG.

Dean could not be burned out, smote or burned eternally in Hellfire until his eyes blackened. His soul couldn’t be charred and darkened until it was unrecognizable. It couldn’t he couldn’t NONONONONO!

Castiel woke with a pain in his chest and a tightness in his throat. Sought out any relief he could find.

The waitress at the Waffle House asked him what was wrong, Castiel looked up at her and asked; “How do you kill the pain of bad memories?”

The girl snorted; “Me? Usually with a couple bottles of wine and some chocolate,” She slid into the booth across from him, “Anything I can do to help?”

Castiel sighed and looked at the waffles on his plate; “Do these come in wine and chocolate?”

The girl chuckled and tapped his hand with her notebook; “I’ve got just the thing.”

0-0-0

The phone call woke him from a feeling of strange urgency. His vessel’s heart was beating frantically and his hands were already turned defensively though he couldn’t recollect why. The sense of it was fading.

Dean. Dean was calling him. He hadn’t prayed, hadn’t reached into the strange connection they shared. Instead he’d dialed a phone number. What did that mean? What did any of it mean?

It took two tries to answer the phone because his vessel’s hands were trembling so badly.

Uncertainty left a sour slick film on his skin. His consciousness felt split and Castiel felt the uncertainty growing within him for reasons he couldn’t pinpoint. “Dean?”

“Hey’a, Cas,” Dean sounded nervous; “I’m… We’re kinda in over our heads here.”

0-0-0

Sam was there when Castiel appeared in the hotel room. Dean, however, was not.

Sam had his shirt off and was tending to the necessities of medical adhesives and colostomy bags, he gave Castiel a look that could only have been called murderous, and threw a tube of medical grade moisture barrier at his head with a thunderous roar. Sputnik yapped excitedly from the bed where she’d rolled herself up in her towel.

Castiel didn’t even think to dodge. It was a tube of ointment, not a knife, not a weapon of any kind—but it collided with his forehead with enough force to bruise and knock him stumbling into the wall.

Sam didn’t apologize, didn’t say anything. Just rolled himself into the bathroom and slammed the door.

Dean and Jo found them like than half an hour later. Castiel sitting at the little table dabbing at a bloody pockmark on his brow surrounded by purpling flesh, and Sam locked in the bathroom.

“What happened to your head?” Dean caught his chin and tilted his face to the light of the lamp.

“I may have startled Sam while he was changing.”

“So he hit you?” Dean took half a step back; “Wait, you mean changing? Or CHANGING, like—“ He made a motion at his stomach; “—Cause, yeah, he’s kind of sensitive about that.”

“It’s proof that he’s healing, why would he be ashamed of it?”

Dean shrugged and scratched self-consciously at the left side of his head; “I got no idea.”

Castiel sat still long enough for Dean to put a bandage over the epicenter of the bruise, mainly so he would stop picking at it and let the damned thing scab over. Dean was tempted to write ‘OUCH!’ across the strip but decided it would probably be a bit much.

Jo had taken up a position on the foot of Dean’s bed with a cup of coffee. She yawned, and curled her palms around the foam.

Dean had to pick the lock to get Sam out of the bathroom, because he was acting like a four-year-old. Wound up dragging the chair propped onto its back wheels while Sam fought to hold the wheels still.

Dean stood in the doorway to keep Sam from hiding again. Tolerated one ram of the footrests against his ankles before he snarled and leapt out of the way of a second; “Sam if you don’t stop it I’m gonna put a stick through your spokes!”

Sam wouldn’t look at Castiel. Had his shoulders hunched defensively and his fingers clenched into fists on the arms of his chair.

Dean turned to Castiel with a sigh; “He’s just upset because he had to stay here while we tracked down the kid’s mom.”

“Kid?” Castiel blinked up at him; “What kid?”

Dean leaned his shoulder against the door jamb; “You want the long version or the short version?”

“Does it make a difference?”

Dean bobbed his head to the side, “We thought it was a restless spirit or a poltergeist until we got to the morgue. Turns out the girl clawed her own brains own—with her bare hands— Then we thought maybe, cursed object—But some octogenarian fried his nurse with a joy buzzer. So, yeah, we think witch—gave the guy who owns the joke shop a heart attack—he’s fine by the way. Then Sam here mapped out the weirdness. And right in the middle of it is this house. Kid’s about nine, ten maybe, got mojo that’d put you to shame and he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. I mean, I thought this guy with the watermelon plant growing in his intestines was weird, but Sam had some beer earlier and started hiccupping bubbles—”

“Shut up, Dean.”

“—Swear to God, actual bubbles,” Dean’s eyes widened and he motioned toward the kitchenette; “I cooked a twenty-pound ham in six seconds with a joy buzzer, Cas. Damned thing doesn’t even have batteries!”

Sam propped his chin on his fist, “Are you done?”

“Yeah, I’m done.”

Castiel folded his hands pensively.

Sam let out a breath and rubbed at the edge of his oxygen cannula; “I did some digging, the boy—Jesse, is adopted. His birth records were sealed, but that doesn’t mean much if you know where to look… His birth mother lives on the other side of the state—But, it turns out she was possessed the whole time, from conception to birth. We don’t know what to do, and were hoping you could give us some

Castiel felt his edges coiling—felt fear and disgust and something slick and sour he couldn’t name spilling into him. “Was she a virgin?”

Sam’s nose wrinkled; “What’s that have to do with—“

Dean shifted uncomfortably on his feet; “Yeah, she was.”

“Where is this boy? You must tell me where he is, we don’t have much time.”

“Why? What’s the hurry?” Sam narrowed his eyes; “What aren’t you telling us?”

“This boy…” Castiel’s teeth appeared between his lips, as if he’d forgotten how to speak for a moment; “This boy is half human, half demon. But far more powerful than either.”

“That’s a thing? Like, he’s full on Rosemary’s Baby?” Dean made a rolling gesture with one finger.

Sam rolled his eyes.

“Other cultures call them cambion or katako. You would know him as the antichrist.”

Sam’s eyebrows jogged to his hairline and Jo took a sharp breath.

“The antichrist?”

“Holy shit, he really is Rosemary’s Baby.”

“Dean,” Sam wrinkled his nose and motioned to the angel with the flat of his hand; “Can you take this seriously for one minute?”

“I am serious. This is my serious face! Really, this freaks me out more than you think,” He leaned his hip against the table and scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “So, what do we do about it?”

Castiel met his eyes evenly; “We must kill it.”

Sam waved a hand between them, as if clearing the air of smoke; “Whoa, okay, slow down… Did you just say ‘kill it’? He’s a little boy, Cas! You—you can’t be serious!”

Jo looked between them with her arms crossed and her lower lip between her teeth. “Is he serious? Are—are we really gonna just kill this kid?”

“We’re not killing anyone—“ Sam said fatalistically.

Dean rubbed his neck warily but remained silent. His stomach ached. On one hand, he could feel the part of Jesse that wasn’t human, could see the black of him… But at the same time didn’t Sam also have something not-quite-human? Didn’t Sam have blackness too? Dean crossed his arms and wondered, not for the first time, what his own soul looked like. Did he have black mixed in with his own color? Did forty years in hell taint him? Did the edges of all the cracks and cuts and holes Alistair had made bleed like a starless smoke filled sky? Could he kill that kid knowing that he himself, may be darker than a child born of demon blood?

They were arguing—Sam and Cas, even Jo was starting to raise her voice.

“Hey—HEY!” Dean heard the bulb in the overhead socket buzz ominously. The room went quiet, but he could hear his own heart beating, had to swallow it down again to deaden the noise; “Nobody’s killing anybody,” He leveled a finger at Castiel; “This kid didn’t ask to be born. I’m not gonna go marching in there and hurt him because of something he couldn’t help. He’s half human, and that’s more than enough.”

The corner of Castiel’s mouth twitched and something dark flitted across his gaze. Something afraid and steely; “This boy is able to hide from both demons and angels. With Lucifer risen, his power grows stronger, and soon he will be able to do more than make a few toys come to life… What you’ve seen so far? Is what happens when this thing is happy… Angry, or frightened, or vengeful, his powers are nigh limitless. If he wants it to happen, it will… He could wipe out entire Flights— He could annihilate the entire host of heaven just by thinking it, Dean. Do you understand? The entire force that stands against Hell could be wiped out by this ‘child’, Lucifer would reign over the earth and watch its inhabitants burn,” His voice was steady. “I cannot allow that to happen.”

Sam bared his teeth; “We don’t know that he’s going to go darkside, Cas. He—He could just as easily take out the demons! He—“ Sam’s eyes widened and he turned to Dean with a tremor in his voice; “He could put Lucifer back in the pit!”

“Lucifer is the very thing that gives this boy power. He would kill him on sight if he rebelled… I understand that you feel an emotional attachment to the boy’s humanity, but this is the only way. I can’t let him—“

“Just let us talk to him!” Sam pushed himself forward, tilted his face up to Castiel in desperation; “Let us explain what’s going on, he’s still human, Cas. He deserves a choice! I mean, isn’t that what we’re fighting for? Choice? If we don’t let him choose we’re no better than Lucifer, or Heaven or any of them!”

Castiel’s eyes flicked to Dean’s and held. Blue and seeming to burn inside in righteous rage. He turned back to Sam with his lips thinned and a crease of tension between his brows; “And if he makes the wrong choice? What then? What if he aligns himself with Lucifer and destroys the Host? How well do you think we’ll fare—the four of us—against the triumphant might of Hell?” Castiel shook his head; “I can’t allow it… I—I can’t allow it—“ And he was gone with the sound of wingbeats.

0-0-0

Dean cursed. Threw his head back and shouted Castiel’s name at the ceiling, threw out whips of grace and tried to drag the angel back, but it did nothing but shatter the remaining bulbs in the room and set off the Prius’ alarm.

Dean went for the door, Jo hot on his heels.

Sam made it out onto the walk just as the Impala screeched away from the curb. He shouted after them in dismay and in a fit of rage threw his water bottle at the Impala’s retreating taillights.

He snarled and snapped at Sputnik and shut her inside the hotel room, huffed and puffed and threw himself into the driver’ seat, situated his legs under the wheel and shoved his chair toward the sidewalk. Fucking thing… He hated it. HATED IT. He’d drive the damned car into the Turner’s living room if he had to.

The oxygen concentrator’s hose pulled at his ear and he had to reel the chair back in to fetch it, threw it hatefully into the passenger seat and slammed the car door, accidentallyonpurpose rammed the wheelchair with the front fender and watched it topple onto its side, felt spitefully vindicated, as he squeezed the accelerator. Snarled again and flicked his high beams on to some guy in a truck who didn’t know what a dimmer switch was, then thrust his arm to the shoulder out the window, middle finger extended when the bastard had the audacity to initiate the gesture.

Sam felt it. Well, maybe FELT isn’t the right word.

He could SMELL it.

Demons always had that faint, lingering smell of brimstone. Sam caught it even before he’d thrown open the car door. He hovered there, bracing himself up in the gap, hands on the frame. The ground seemed so far away. Nothing but dirt and grit and sharp pebbles. The stairs loomed at him like Everest.

Sam could hear Dean shouting—Crying out in pain. A loud thud—a body hitting the wall. Jo was screaming—

“Don’t listen to her! Don’t listen, she’s a demon! Don’t li—“

“Shut up!” Jesse sounded so innocent. So gentle, but Jo’s voice cut off violently. An abrupt, ugly silence and Sam’s blood ran cold.

Dean was making a choking noise. The same noise he’d made on the side of the road months ago, the night Sam had dragged him lifeless and drained from the service station, mid seizure.

Sam bared his teeth and pulled the oxygen cannula free. He took a deep breath and reached for the earth. Rolled onto his shoulders on the ground and pulled one leg, then the other out of the car.

There, not so bad. Just like physical therapy when the therapist made him get himself up out of the floor into his chair and back again so many times his chest and stomach and back had hurt like he’d been beaten.

Sam levered his torso up, hands flat on the ground, tiny jagged stones biting into his palms, and dragged himself toward the stairs. Knife. Knife! He had the demon killing knife stuffed into the side of his sock. Left leg because the right was taken up by a goddamned collection bag; “Fuck!’ Sam snarled, hands on the first step and heaved himself up, elbows on the second, eased himself to his hands and PULL.

It didn’t go easy. He’d dragged himself up a set of stairs before. Years ago. He’d been thrown down a staircase by the spirit of an old man and broke his left leg. He could still remember the sharp world rending pain of his femur snapping, just above the knee, and the crunch of his opposite ankle as he’d hit the landing. He’d dragged himself up because Dean was still up there, halfway down a vent looking for the old man’s cigar box of nineteen-thirties kiddie porn. It had been difficult then, when his abdomen was fully functional. Now—Now it was nearly impossible. He couldn’t quite manage to hook his hip on the edge of the step and kept sliding back down unless he stopped to move his legs, get one foot on the step and he could use his weight against the sole of his shoe as a makeshift brake. He’d managed three steps when he felt some invisible force wrap around his chest and yank him backward—BANGBANGBANG! Up the last few steps, rolling through the screen door—CRACK! Against the back of a chair—CRUNCH! Right into the wainscot and UPUPUPUP! His head bounced off the ceiling and he could feel shards of plaster raining down as he shook his head to clear it, fought back the encroaching darkness.

It was a nice house, for what Sam could see of it. Plain, but lovingly kept. Photos on the wall of Jesse and his parents. School photos, holidays, first bicycle, first day of school. Birthdays—

Jesse looked like a kid. But he had a look in his eyes, age beyond the physical. Sam saw the same thing looking at the scant photos of Dean he’d been able to find at Bobby’s.

The stench of sulfur was so strong Sam felt tears building at the edges of his eyes, wrote them off as a reaction to having his head smashed into the ceiling and not the proximity to the demon.

Demon.

DEMON. Jesse smelled like a kid. Kind of like spaghettiO’s, kind of like laundry detergent. No sulfur. NO SULFUR—but the blonde woman standing beside him grinning. Well, she was another story entirely.

“Sam Winchester!” She grinned with sticky teeth; “Oh, I know someone who’ll be happy to see you!” She turned and regarded the adjacent wall; “Not only did I find Dear Jesse here, but I found two Heirs and a spare!”

Sam fought to turn his head, found Dean hanging upside down, face purpling, eyes rolling as he fought for breath, clawing at his own throat. And Jo, lips pale and pressed unnaturally tight. Her jaw was working up and down, eyes wide, but she made no sound. Not even a whimper.

“Jesse—“ Sam wheezed. Eyes finding the boy’s and demanding with everything he had that the child look at him, HEAR him; “Jesse, stop her. She—She’s not human—“

The demon laughed; “Oh, that’s rich coming from you,”

Dean’s voice came out on a rasp, a desperate bloody sound as he fought the demon’s influence; “Sam—Sam—“ His eyes flicked to the boy and it was almost as if Sam could hear Dean screaming—not in his voice, but in urges. Need and fear and a sour prickly sensation like a dill pickle studded in porcupine quills.

Sam turned his eyes to the boy once more, and saw the fear in his face. Saw the desperation and growing panic in tiny black veins at the edges of his brown eyes. Sam felt something in his chest hitch and his mouth moved; “Jesse, it’s OK. We’re gonna help you, but you gotta stop her. She’s a demon and she’s going to—“

Sam felt his teeth clamp onto the end of his tongue, like a mouse trap and his head bounced hard against the wall once, twice—three times. The room twisted and rolled like a spinning top and the world faded out for a few seconds, but he wrestled himself back to consciousness, forced his tongue and mouth to move and his voice to work; “She’s possessing that woman—She’s lying.”

“I’m lying?” The demon said and twisted her hand, Dean’s wheezing breaths cut off entirely. “He told you he was FBI, and he’s not. He’s a liar, a conman and a freak!” She turned to the boy with her lips rolled back from her teeth; “You can feel it, can’t you. You can feel it inside. Something feels wrong about him, doesn’t it. Well, that’s because there is something wrong with him,” She smiled beatifically, “He’s got something disgusting inside him, Jesse. Something he stole… And stealing is wrong, isn’t it, Jesse. Thieves get their hands cut off, just like in the movies, right? Liars tongues fall out, don’t they—”

Dean’s eyes bugged.

“Look at her, Jesse!” Sam choked, couldn’t pull in enough air with the pressure of the demon’s hold around his chest; “Look at her! You wanna know the truth LOOK AT HER! Look what’s under that smile. You can see her real face if you look h-hard enough I know you can. Look at her and—“

The demon turned to Sam with a low snarl, like a bear about to attack, hand lifting, fingers curled, intent clear.

But instead there was a voice.

“Stop it!” Jesse turned to her, with his tiny teeth bared; “Sit down!”

The demon flew backward and hit in a wingback so hard it left ugly skid marks on the hardwood.

“They lied to you Jesse. They’ll hurt you, just like that bastard tried to do. Stop them now before they hurt you—before they hurt me!”

“SHUT UP!”

The demon’s teeth clicked together audibly and all sound from it ceased.

Jesse turned to Sam, his eyes flickering from within behind a growing webwork of black veins; “Who are you?”

Sam’s mouth and voice worked without his control. He had never felt anything so eerie, or so completely violating. Even being possessed years ago had had some kind of reason to it. This simply and inevitably was and it was terrifying; “S-Samuel John Winchester.”

Jesse swallowed a visible shiver; “What are you doing in my house!”

“I came to kick Dean’s ass for leaving me at the hotel.”

Dean looked visibly affronted behind the bluish tint to his skin.

Jesse’s nose wrinkled; “W-why’d he try to kill me?” His little hand curled, index finger extended toward a tiny rumpled figure lying half obscured under the overturned coffee table.

Sam’s eyes widened and his voice continued on calmly despite his panic; “Because you’re half demon. He thinks you’re dangerous—”

Jesse’s face became hard like stone and his teeth grit.

The demon in the chair grinned silently, eyes sliding to black in delight.

“—But I don’t think you’re dangerous. You don’t have to be evil—“

“But I’m part demon… And demons are bad, everybody knows that.”

“You don’t have to be bad,” Sam said urgently; “You can’t help the way you were born. You can’t change that— trust me, I know. but you can choose to be something better. You can choose to be good. Jesse—it doesn’t matter what happened before. It doesn’t matter what their intent for you was—all that matters is what YOU want to do. What you choose to do with the power you have. You don’t have to be bad, just because people tell you that part of you is. You can prove them wrong—“ He glanced to the side, caught Dean’s eyes and held his gaze for half a breath; “Your choices are what make you good or bad. Not your blood, not your parents, or their intent. YOU. You’re responsible for your own choices, you’re actions and decisions make you, not theirs.”

Jesse stared at him. Eyes wide and innocent and flecked with tiny black veins. His gaze was unnerving, but somehow so completely innocent Sam couldn’t force himself to look away.

Sam turned his eyes toward the demon in the chair; “She wants you to think that you don’t have a choice. She wants you to be scared and angry at us so you’ll do bad things… Yes, they lied—we lied to you. We lied and we’re sorry, but here’s the truth… You—you are part demon, but you’re also part human, and that human part is a lot more important. Being human gives you a choice, Jesse. You get to choose to be good or to be bad. Look around… All these pictures—I don’t see a demon in them. I see a boy, I see someone happy—someone GOOD. I know you can see it, you can feel it inside— You know you’re not a bad person. You don’t want to be a bad person… So prove it.”

Jesse’s shoulders squared and his mouth compressed. He turned, just a fraction of a degree, eyes locking on the demon in the corner. He spoke with confidence, the same tone his mom used to warn him away from sweets before dinner, or his father used to keep him away from the sharp tools in the garage, until he’d been taught to use them correctly.

But, for this, Jesse didn’t need any tutoring. He didn’t need to be taught. He knew, he knew as easily as he knew how to breathe while sleeping, or how to grow, or how to exist. He met the demon’s black eyes and spoke; “Get out of her.”

The demon’s eyes bugged from its host’s head and it ejected itself out of the woman like a canon blast, so fast and complete the air in the room got hot and the woman in the chair was propelled backward against the wall with a thud.

Sam, Dean, and Jo felt the demon’s power leave, and dropped to the floor in unison.

Dean had the presence of mind to twist himself as he fell, and he landed on his back rather than his face, but Sam wasn’t as lucky, flopped like a rag doll onto his side against the far wall with a crack of limbs against floor boards.

Jo lurched upright quickly and went to Sam, pulling him up into a sitting position so he could breathe. Dean—Dean rolled to his hands and knees and shook his head like a dog to clear it. Pushed up on shaking legs and leaned against the wall, eyes locked on the stern, yet sad expression on the plastic Castiel’s face where he was protruding from under the coffee table.

Dean felt sick to his stomach. Felt that weird connection with Castiel empty—like shouting into the void. He felt clammy and off kilter, reached out and took the plastic Cas in his hands, stared at it—HIM—and didn’t know what to do with himself.

Dean. Someone said; Dean, help.

But he didn’t hear it, couldn’t hear anything but a dull ringing in his ears.

Jesse was staring at him. Dean wanted to snarl and snap and possibly throw things, but the kid kind of scared him. He’d turned Cas into a fucking DOLL!

“Oh, God,” Dean’s hands were shaking. He turned and stared at Jesse, heart in his throat. “Please…” His voice cracked like egg shell; “Please, bring him back.”

Jesse blinked at the hunk of plastic that used to be an angel; “He tried to kill me.”

Dean couldn’t breathe, the world around him was tunneling out; “Please—Jesse, please.”

The kid tilted his head to the side a little, “He was your friend?”

Dean felt himself nodding, felt bitter laughter in his throat; “Yeah—yeah, you could say that. Please, kid—I… I kind of n-need him.”

Jesse blinked and the little black veins in his eyes were gone, the pressing aura of him was gone and he was just a boy standing there staring. He looked to Sam and Jo, then back to Dean. He took the plastic Cas and stared at him like one might stare at a poisonous snake in a jar. “I can’t stay here, can I… They’ll come back. The demons. They’ll come back and try to take me away and make me bad,” He lifted the plastic Cas’ arm and pushed it down again on its plastic joint. “Or angels will come to kill me.”

Dean felt his heart in his throat; “Jesse—“

And Sam started speaking, a wheeze of a sound, but it was enough; “If they don’t know where you are—if they can’t see you they can’t f-find you,” Sam sucked in a whistling breath; “We can help you stay invisible.”

“Invisible,” Jesse chewed his little lips, chin to his chest, he fiddled with Plastic Castiel’s articulated wrists again, bent them this way and that. He rubbed a drip from his nose onto the sleeve of his pajamas and looked up; “I’m not leaving without my mom.”

“If you—think that’s best, we can’t stop you,” Sam had his chin pushed up, struggling for air; “But, just so you know. Sh-she’ll be in danger every day. Every second. T-the demons c-can see her. No m-matter what we do.”

Dean was waiting for the kid to snap one of Cas’ hands off his plastic arm. Had seen too many broken dolls in his lifetime—felt the urge to scream and take Castiel back.

Jesse turned back to the plastic angel and it seemed, for a moment, he intended to break him, his face scrunched up and his hands shook, squeezing the plastic… the lightbulbs flickered and the very house seemed to tremble. Then he looked up again—met Dean’s eyes… and the rage faded. He inhaled deeply and let it out; “Can I at least say goodbye?”

Sam nodded, watched the boy pad away with the plastic Castiel in his hands, waited until the kid was out of the room before turning to his brother; “Dean—DEAN! Come on. Don’t space out on me now. I need you—I can’t breathe, Dean!”

But Dean wasn’t listening. Not really. On some level he heard his brother, on another he heard nothing, felt nothing— His hand tangled in the front of his shirt lungs fighting to inflate. He turned his head slowly, nodding, and pushed himself up on rubbery legs. He’d been reduced to automatic responses. An automaton, he moved because Sam needed him to. He focused only on what was in front of him, what kept him and his brother alive and fought to push down the rest. He staggered to the door and onto the porch, nearly toppled down the steps on his quest to get Sam’s oxygen.

Just keep going. Don’t stop—you can do this. You knew it would happen. You knew it. You’ve been preparing for it since day one. He’s not CAS, he’s not HIM—

I know. I know that and I don’t care—I want him—I wanted him—oh FUCK that kid turned him into a Ken doll! Cas is gone. He’s GONE!

What happens to angels when they die? Where do disobedient angels go?

Dean staggered back inside and dropped into a crouch at his brother’s side, shoved the oxygen cannula against Sam’s nose and turned the machine up.

Jo was prodding her face, trying to press her lips apart, but there was no change. Jesse had truly meant it when he told her to shut up.

Sam turned and focused on Dean, nostrils flared as he tried to drag in more oxygen; “Dean—“

His eyes were unfocused, mouth pale.

“Dean, come on. Don’t do this, not now. M-maybe—“ He fought for a deeper breath; “—maybe the kid can bring him back—don’t—Dean, don’t do this to me, man. I need you right now. Dean, I need your help,” He groped for his brother’s hand and squeezed until he felt Dean’s bones rubbing together.

Sam’s heart was racing, the fear and the pressure of the demon’s might against his ribcage had forced too much oxygen from his body, silvery specks were dancing at the edges of his vision, even as he tilted his head back in hopes of opening up his air way even more. “Dean, don’t leave me here, come on.”

Dean returned the pressure slowly, took a shuddering breath of his own and nodded, made a choked whimpering sound that he had intended to be words and squeezed his eyes closed so tightly white flashed across the backs of his eyes.

Jo shuffled forward on her knees and took Sam’s other hand, wincing as he gripped her fingers.

Silence, save the whirr of the oxygen concentrator and Sam’s weakened pulls of air.

Then suddenly Jo’s mouth popped open and she made a loud honking noise in surprise.

Sam turned his eyes to her in shock and relief, “You alright?”

She massaged her cheeks, expression sour; “I-I guess so,” She worked her tongue against the back of her lips; “Remind me not to sass the Antichrist next time.”

Maybe it was shock. At least that’s what Dean would tell himself later. He was in shock because he’d been held upside down against a wall and strangled by a demon. That kind of thing didn’t set well with anybody’s psyche, especially someone who’d become intimately acquainted with some demons while in Hell. Maybe he would just always have an issue with them now. A Demon sensitivity like Sam had a grease sensitivity, only instead of atomic shits Dean would get flashbacks, phantom pain, and near crippling fear. Maybe it would be something he’d have to deal with slowly, like Sam and his weirdo therapist ideals said he would. Maybe it would be something he would never get over and he’d spend the rest of his life feeling sick and shaky and afraid when in the presence of a demon.

Maybe it was something else entirely.

Dean felt it happen. Felt it down deeper than his bones. One minute there was nothing for his grace to reverberate against, nothing for his energy to ‘Resonate’ with as Castiel had called it. Then one minute there was, as if it had never been absent. He turned on the balls of his feet and there the angel was, standing in the doorway looking rumpled and disturbed and more than a little frightened. The knife in his hand clattered to the floor and he took a deep, shaking breath, eyes casting about as if in search of the antichrist.

Instead they found Dean, and the tension melted from his frame.

Castiel’s throat clicked as he swallowed, realization pulling the color from his face; “He’s gone… Jesse’s gone.”

Jo was on her feet first, darted upstairs to see for herself that the boy had vanished, kind of wanted to smack him one even if he made her arms fall off or exploded her or turned her into a Barbie doll. It would be worth it… kind of… maybe. Yeah.

Dean levered himself to his feet, lips and fingertips numb, and wrapped both arms around the angel. Squeezed and buried his nose in the concentrated scent of him, right in the crook of his neck. “Cas,” His voice shook, “Cas, I thought—“

The angel’s arms lifted and curled around him, seemed to envelop him with more than the feeble physical strength of his vessel, Castiel pulled him close with everything he was and HELD him.

Dean felt it go through him like a shock wave. Warmth, security, relief, and belonging. His sinuses prickled and he pressed his face into the angel’s collar to keep it from spreading.

Castiel’s hand formed itself to the back of his head, tangled in the hair there. Curious and urgent, pulled just a little too much for Dean’s liking but he didn’t tell the angel to stop. If anything he cleaved all the tighter to him because of it.

Jo came back down the stairs, boots making far too much noise for her size. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and watched it like a train wreck. She couldn’t see Castiel’s face from that angle, but she could see Dean’s; The relief and wet tracks on his cheeks. The way the pain showed through like light through all his cracks.

Realization struck her like lightening and for a moment she almost wanted to look away, felt as if she were invading on something private. She’d seen Dean relieved before, and on the other end of the spectrum, she’d seen Dean relieved over Sam. This was something different. Intense and unrestrained like she’d never known Dean was capable of. It was softer than his relief over Sam, less likely to make them both fly apart and destroy something, but in the same moment stronger.

She didn’t understand it, found herself fascinated even as Dean finally pulled away, scuffed the sleeve of his jacket over his eyes and under his nose and stepped a respectable arm’s length away with a wet sounding snuff. He clapped Castel twice on the shoulder and turned back to Sam with color burning in his cheeks.

It took all three of them to get Sam back down the stairs and into the Prius and Jo rode with him back to the hotel just because he was still pale and shaky and she didn’t trust him behind the wheel of a car alone. She made herself stay focused on Sam, but every so often found her eyes straying to the back window of the Impala, the dark shadow of Dean’s head and shoulders she could see when they stopped or were passed by an oncoming vehicle. Castiel was sitting closer than necessary and Dean only had one hand on the wheel.

She couldn’t tell if they were talking, they didn’t turn to look at one another. If anything Dean seemed to be pointedly ignoring Castiel.

They spent the night, Jo tried to sleep but couldn’t, wound up calling her mother and staring across the parking lot into the still lighted window of Dean and Sam’s room. The shadow on the curtain of Castiel sitting at the table, immovable like stone for hours. Until suddenly he was standing, shrugging out of his coat, then the light went out.  
0-0-0

“I think there’s something going on between them.”

“Oh?” Ellen said, rubbing sleep from her eye. She hadn’t bothered turning on the light, just continued to lay there in the dark listening to her daughter speak.

“It’s the way they don’t look at one another. It’s like they want to, but they don’t do it BECAUSE they want to.”

Ellen chuckled. “Yeah. That sums it up pretty well.”

“So, how do I get the ball rolling?”

Ellen shifted her head against the pillow; “You don’t… This is something Dean’s gotta figure out on his own. I mean, he’s not clueless. Even if he acts it most of the time,” She hummed, “Just let it happen. If it works out, wonderful. If not, oh well.”

“But I just wanna push their heads together—“

Ellen snorted; “You’ll do no such thing.”

“It’d be easier if I did.”

“Well, easy ain’t always right.”

Jo made a humming noise; “They’re not the only ones.”

“Now you just shut your trap, Joanna Beth.”

“But when was the last time you went out—“

“I mean it. I’ll hang up.”

Jo rolled her eyes; “Fine…” She drew a little skull on the motel stationary and gave it a Mohawk; “Bobby get the deer?”

“No. He’s too busy complaining about it… I’m not exactly sure he wants to kill it. I think he kind of likes having an excuse to bitch about something.”

“Probably…”

Ellen hummed; “Did you get the witch?”

“Witch?”

“The case, Jo. Did you find out what was messing with those people?”

Jo made a sound in the back of her throat; “Oh, uh—yeah. Yeah, we got it.”

“It was a witch, right?”

“Uh—well… Not exactly.”

“Am I going to regret allowing you to go out without me?”

“It wasn’t that bad… just a little boy that was half demon… He was actually kind of sweet until he glued my mouth shut.”

“And this is supposed to make me feel better?”

“I just take solace in the fact that you’re still half asleep and won’t remember much of this conversation in the morning.”

“So you think.”

Jo hesitated, mouth opening and closing; “Mom?”

“Hmm?”

“I—I don’t say it a lot, but I love you, yanno? I mean—this kid, mom. This kid… He loved his parents so much he ran away to protect them… I— He’s nine and we kind of ruined his life… What if he thinks he’s a monster now? What—What if we drove him into hating himself and becoming exactly what the demons want him to be?”

Ellen sighed and rolled onto her back, “You did everything you could… It’s his choice now. We don’t know what part we’re gonna play until it’s over… We just gotta do what we think is right and hope for the best.”

Jo scribbled furiously over the little skeleton she’d been sketching; “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“Then trust me,” Ellen’s throat felt thick; “Even if this ends bloody—which it probably will—we’re gonna go down fighting for our right to exist. If we don’t, we’re just lambs to the slaughter. And I for one, am not a damned sheep.”

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	50. Old Wounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to Jessi, and Emmyloo03. For your advice and guidance, I salute you!

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It was dangerous, Sam had been right about that. Staying in Alliance was going to be dangerous; as soon as Jesse’s parents woke up from whatever grace-induced-hyper-sleep Castiel had put them in and realized their son was missing, there would be trouble. 

The local authorities would go straight to the ‘feds’ and then the real feds would be called in and… well, it was just a big BIG mess. 

But, Sam was also bluish around his mouth and sporting a fantastic menagerie of bruises from his heels to the nape of his neck, not to mention the lump on the back of his head from hitting the ceiling. 

Three hours. 

Dean said three hours. 

Sam was out in fifteen minutes. Propped up in his bed while Castiel tried to press grace into his injuries. It worked, to a certain degree, but the headache remained, the blueness to his lips and nailbeds faded only as he was still and his breathing evened out. 

Dean sat on his own bed and watched, arms around his chest, knees jackknifed. Watched and pushed down the relief both at Sam’s slow recovery and the broad hum of his own grace resonating with Castiel’s. 

Sam slept, Dean watched, tried to prevent his head from bobbing and his vision from swimming. 

“Dean.” 

“I’m awake.” 

Castiel made a sound, soft and indulgent, “You need rest.”

“I’m fine.” 

“We both know that’s a lie.” 

Dean turned to look at him, brows drawn down, and found himself locked in those eyes. It scared him, how at home he felt, how at peace, when Castiel looked at him like that. Gently, with that strange hidden intensity. It scared him because he knew that look. He knew it because, if he were being honest with himself, he was familiar with the taste of it on the back of his tongue. The longing and hopefulness… The need. He’d seen it before in… in a dream.

He’d tried, he’d tried so hard to push it down, to hide it and fight it and deny it because Cas—CAS—wasn’t real. Had never been, he’d been a figment of Dean’s imagination, therefore what he’d felt for him had also been a construct of the Djinn… Nothing that intense, nothing that wonderful could be real.

But Those horrifying moments after Jesse had willed Castiel away. When there was nothing left for Dean’s grace to connect with—Oh, GOD! It had HURT. It had hurt worse than almost anything he’d felt topside. 

And when Castiel returned. When he was THERE suddenly—it couldn’t be possible. It SHOULDN’T be possible. Dean hadn’t been able to speak the whole ride back to the hotel. Had barely been able to breathe around the thud of his heart in his chest, the flutter in his gut that made him feel both nauseous and elated—the NEEDLONGINGLO—

How could it be real? 

How?

“Dean.”

“Cas?”

The angel’s lips twitched, just a tiny fraction of a thing, it made Dean’s heart pound. He glanced away, but his eyes were drawn inexorably back. 

“You should sleep.”

Dean rubbed the side of his face, using his palm as a physical barrier between himself and the angel. “As long’s you stay,” He almost regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. He hadn’t meant to speak them. Feeling them was one thing, he’d learned how to shut his thoughts out of the link he shared with Castiel, for the most part. But speaking? Why was it that Castiel could make him talk? Just by sitting there with that dumb concerned look on his face. How could he make Dean talk without even knowing his lips were moving?

Castiel stopped, Dean didn’t know that he had been moving but everything about his stance when he looked over once more, heart in his neck, screamed of being stopped in the middle of something. What, Dean had no clue. 

Neither spoke for almost a full ten seconds. Then something changed. As if Dean could see the angel’s edges softening, he rose to his feet, shrugging out of his jacket and coat. 

Dean’s heart convulsed and he reached for the light, hoping the sudden plunge into darkness would ease the frantic feeling in his middle. He could still see Castiel’s edges, highlighted against the darkness of the room by the diffused light of the parking lot and the trickle through a crack in the bathroom door. 

Castiel pulled off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt, draped both over the back of his chair, toed off his shoes and approached the bed. Settled on his back across the mattress from Dean, a wall between the hunter and the door. 

Dean shifted his head on the pillow to stare at him, felt the memory of the angel’s absence and moved without true conscious effort. He needed that connection, that FEELING—needed to know Castiel was OK, that Jesse hadn’t wished him away into the fucking cornfield.

Castiel’s stolen skin was warm to the touch, smelled vaguely of soap and sweat and the interior of his truck. The bandage on his forehead was still in place, and Dean could feel the slight raised area beneath it. The rough scratch of stubble on his cheeks and jaw and the underside of his chin. 

The angel’s hands cupped against his face, thumbs swiping gently back and forth against his cheekbones. 

They didn’t say anything. Words meant so little when Dean could feel the WARMTH in this connection or whatever you wanted to call it. When he could feel Castiel in all his glory packed tightly into too human skin. When he could feel the color of him with every breath and heartbeat and tickle of grace against his edges. 

It—Jesus Christ it felt good. Felt better than pretty much anything had in too long. Maybe nothing had ever felt this good. Just laying there with his hands on Castiel, just holding his face and feeling the acceleration of a pulse in his stolen neck, the bob of his throat as he swallowed. The heat of his breath. The heavy fact of him, so solid and whole and REAL. 

He moved because to remain still seemed wrong. He needed more deeply than he could ever remember, craved something he feared to name. Dean shifted his shoulders forward and pulled the angel in by his hair. 

Castiel didn’t respond at first, but when he did it was with everything he had. His nonphysical hands and arms wrapped around Dean, pulling their energies together, and the barometric pressure of the room dipped, the galaxy’s whorl color of Castiel folding forward, wings seeming to curl protectively around them both. Dean felt them like that electric feeling in the air before a lightning strike. A static charge that raced up and down his spine.

Castiel’s mouth tasted vaguely sweet, like fruity hard candy, the kind Dean had found wrappers for scattered around in the angel’s wake. Drifting in his shadow like loose feathers. His lips were dry, but not rough and Dean felt a shiver bolt through him at the brush of Castiel’s prickly chin against his own. The warm grate of skin. He tilted his head and shifted the focus of the kiss slowly caught Castiel’s lower lip and drew on it, felt the body against his own tense and arch upward languorously, a low rumble deep in the angel’s throat. He felt it like electric prickles against his skin, lifting the little hairs on his arms and the back of his neck.

That sound was liquid over his nerves, scalding and Dean discovered he would never have enough of it. A thousand years and he would still never have enough. 

Something built in his gut, hot and shivery and potentially apocalyptic. It felt kind of like his heart was going to beat out of his chest, or his nerves would rip right out of his body in a bloody explosion of ecstasy. It was both frightening and eye opening. And he wanted it—He WANTED IT.

Tension grew in his belly, a nervous energy that set his hands and lips trembling. Made his core shiver as if all the heat had been sucked from the room. Dean wanted skin and friction and the wet gasping slide of mouths. Grabbing and pulling and pushing and need—His body sang, his mind shivered, vague dark shapes echoing back in the recesses of his memory. Demons and devils and pain—but this felt so different. Felt so good. Oh, Christ he just wanted to feel good again! Cas—CAS would never hurt him like that, not EVER!

“Fuck!” His hands shook, shoving Castiel back against the mattress he moved over him quivering, elbows on either side of the angel’s head, right leg thrown over his waist. The heat of their skin separated only by the thickness of his boxerbriefs and jeans. 

His heart was racing, panic or jubilation he couldn’t be sure. But it was something—Something NEW and so different than Hell, so different he felt that maybe, maybe it would erase everything before this point. Purify him—

He was so enthralled his hands felt numb, his vision was tunneling out and his stomach felt like it was filled with helium, loose and bobbing about on a string.

Castiel’s breath shuddered in and out, chin tilting up, eyes squeezed shut in shock, grace burning bright enough that it was almost visible between his cells. It was pure contact, his grace seeming to mesh with Dean’s—through it to brush the boarders of his soul—And Dean reached back—

Brief, a flare, a bomb blast of sensation Castiel couldn’t name, but missed more than the presence of his kin, more than the sanctuary of Heaven— Familiarity. He—he KNEW THIS! 

That impossibly thin barrier in his mind stretched and it was almost as if Castiel could see shapes through it, see hands reaching out at him from emptiness. Eyes and—

And everything came crashing down.

There was no warning. No hint—but suddenly the soul pressed between Castiel’s sixth hands lashed out—A sharp, knife like blade of intent aimed directly at Dean. 

Castiel’s eyes widened in shock and pain and his hands and wings released, curled around himself and the enraged thrashing of his vessel’s soul. 

Dean lurched back and upward with a hand to his chest gasping for breath and nearly toppled into the floor in a frantic scramble to separate himself from the angel. His face—

Oh, his face! 

Castiel, in that moment, was glad he couldn’t see Dean’s soul. Was glad the only sight he had was through stolen eyes because, had he been able to see the terror, pain, and self-disgust ripple through more than just Dean’s physical appearance, he may have torn out another part of himself in an attempt to heal it. 

It hurt. Oh, Father, but it HURT!

Pain sliced through his heart and Castiel’s breath shuddered with it, face contorting. He turned away, felt Dean shifting to sit on the far edge of the bed, discretely rubbing his face with wide palms. Shoulders trembling as he fought to chase away the crawling sick feeling under his skin. 

“Dean—“

“I’m sorry,” His voice—He sounded small and cracked and HURT.

Castiel turned to him, longing a cold stone in his core. “Dean, please, don—“

“You should go… I— I’ll see you at Bobby’s.”

Castiel felt it then, the dismissal. It wasn’t a cold dismissal, wasn’t an insult, but Dean wanted him to go. NEEDED him to go because something was raw and torn loose inside him and Castiel’s presence was like salt in the wound.

He gathered his discarded clothing and left without a word. Rocked forward into solidity at the driver’s door of his truck. 

HIS truck. 

It HUMMED with Dean’s energy and intent and care. 

Castiel bowed his head against the door, clothes balled to his chest and tried to soothe the prickly, unsettled energy radiating from Jimmy Novak’s soul. He stood there for a long time, socked feet growing damp against the parking lot asphalt, rain spitting down on his head and shoulders. He lifted a hand and stared at it, remembered the constricting burn of taking a vessel for the first time. Learning what nerves controlled what appendage. What pain felt like… what touch felt like—what pancake syrup tastes like. 

In that moment he didn’t understand Jimmy Novak at all. Why would he want to give this up? Why would he want to escape this—THIS?

Why would heaven want to destroy it all?

Maybe they didn’t know, maybe they’d never felt it before. Maybe they didn’t understand—

Maybe this DARKENING was real. Maybe he was falling… Maybe Dean’s emotions were bleeding through this bond they shared and tainting him. Swaying the purity of the Will of God and bending an Angel to his flawed, human will.

Something in his core pulled tight and Castiel pressed his stolen brow harder into the cold metal of the truck’s door. Lifted away half an inch only to push back into it hard. So hard he felt the flesh beneath the bandage Dean had stuck to him pinch and reopen, blood smearing in the rain. 

He could feel grace in it. Leeching into the paint and metal, between the atoms and finding traces of Dean’s energy. Merging—looping together like interlocking rings. Growing stronger in the other’s presence.

Impossible. 

Impossible, but there it was. A miracle.

Water dripped from the tip of his nose and chin. Cold, and salty and Castiel couldn’t take it. Slapped a hand to the side of the bed and shoved Grace into the paint, intent on destroying this— this abomination.

He was an ANGEL. Not a human. He didn’t FEEL, didn’t SLEEP, didn’t EAT, or HURT, or NEED. He was a creature born of the Ecstasy of God made Manifest. He was light, and Grace, and burning Righteous fury! He was CASTIEL! Angel of Thursdays, Maker of Thunder, Commander of Garrisons! He had smote demons and bore witness to Lucifer’s descent. Had sealed the Eastern Gates and born the Righteous Man from Hell! 

Dean’s energy reached back into the purging coil of Castiel’s intent. Met it… and he couldn’t. He couldn’t do it. Something echoed back at him through it—that instant back in the Turner’s house when he had reappeared in the exact place he’d felt himself destroyed. 

Dean’s face, wet and pale—his eyes wide in awe, and disbelief. And from within, through the bridge between them— A moment, not brief as he had assumed it would be, but lingering—Like radiation from a solar flare. Dean had seen him and that want had been reborn amid the despair. ReliefJOYfearNEEDHOPE—Thank you—Don’t take him away. I can’t lose him again. I’d die first—

And Castiel’s rage at the antichrist’s escape had snuffed out like a candle flame. Instead there was concern, fear that his loss, even momentarily, had caused Dean such pain. 

Fear that their roles could have been reversed.

What would he have done if Dean had been taken from him?

You are DARKENED, Castiel. That human has darkened you!

No. He was NOT weak enough to be swayed by a HUMAN’s will. He was not… not weak—Something else had to be at play. Something beyond what the others could see. 

It didn’t FEEL wrong. Aligning himself with Dean, with Humanity, didn’t feel WRONG. It felt more right than anything had in eons. If he was doing wrong, wouldn’t he feel it? Wouldn’t he know if God had formed him incorrectly? 

But, what if it was his own fault? What if, by giving Dean part of his grace, he had damned them both? Poisoned the human, and poisoned himself. What if that was the Darkening? What if, by defying the orders of heaven and not allowing Uriel to seal Dean into his body once more, he had set into motion the only option that could have led to this… this destruction.

What if by giving Dean a shard of his grace, he had single handedly thwarted God’s plan?

Castiel breathed, eyes opening, and when he pulled his hand back from the side of the truck, flesh sticking just enough that he had to peel his vessel’s palm away, the metal below his hand glowed with grace. His own and Dean’s, swirling and connecting. He imagined he could see it, bright and beautiful and impossible.

But there it was.

He stared at it for a moment then turned his gaze upward, could feel the energy of the rain and clouds and distant thunder. Could taste the faint hints of God’s energy in them. A remnant from the Beginning. 

He put his hand into his pocket and drew out the amulet, stared at the little face with its horns and swirling third eye. It seemed heavy and cold against his vessel’s flesh. 

His jaw tightened. 

It had burned brightly once, so bright—When he had been in Dean’s presence. When they had been wrapped up into one another. He looked at the truck again and felt certainty building in his core. It couldn’t be coincidence. Couldn’t be. He had felt GOD’s presence and woken—

HE had felt God’s presence. The one his kin called ‘Traitor’ and ‘Darkened’ ‘Ugly’. HE had felt GOD’s presence… and woken too late to see him.

But, he had been there. God had been there. God had come to them, no one else. 

Castiel’s jaw tightened and he willed the truck’s locks open, climbed inside and sat there staring at the amulet, a renewed flame burning in his heart. It was the only variable he hadn’t yet explored, and if he was right—if it worked then… Well, Castiel didn’t really know what would happen. He was shaking just at the idea of it. 

His father, he could find his father. God could be RIGHT THERE, but as with a spell, certain conditions had to be met to reveal his presence. Perhaps the relic only worked under certain conditions. 

“First light… A Profound Bond—and the amulet,” It was ingenious, would ensure God was protected from unworthy entities. It—it was PERFECT! It made SENSE! For the first time in a long while, something made SENSE!

Castiel felt himself bubbling with excitement, wings fanned eagerly, hands fluttering—alien and undignified, but he couldn’t help himself. Joy and hope burned in his core for the first time in ages, and when the truck rumbled into life Castiel was practically bouncing in his seat, still dripping. He turned the headlights toward South Dakota and pressed his foot to the accelerator. 

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Dean showered, scrubbed himself head to foot too roughly under water that was too hot. His skin felt strange, his breath was too fast. He didn’t like it. Felt on the verge of something awful… He shook two Valerian capsules from the bottle and swallowed them, wrapped himself in all the blankets on his bed and lie there shivering, eyes locked on Sam until the pills started working. Counted his brother’s breaths until his own slowed and deepened to match them. 

Sleep didn’t come easily. Not that Dean expected it to. The nightmares reared up like storm clouds and he fled from them when he could, faced them when he could not. Woke too soon and bore red, bloodshot eyes all the way into South Dakota. 

His thoughts wailed, and yet when he tried to organize them there was nothing there to grab on to. 

Sam watched him. One of those intense WATCHINGS like Dean had been subjected to growing up. Sam followed him with his eyes everywhere he went, said nothing, and maybe that was worse. 

Dean took more Valerian root after Ellen had had her moment to fuss over them and shout at Sam, then Dean disappeared upstairs and shut himself away. Lie curled around Sputnik on his too small bed and hoped for dreamless sleep.

0-0-0

For two days there was silence. And not the kind of silence that sat well with anyone, Dean included. 

It came to a head on the evening of the third day. Castiel had called Sam, said he would arrive before sundown and Dean had disappeared outside.

He had the Impala up on jacks, changing the oil with the radio playing. He was tapping his foot along with the beat and grunted in acknowledgement when Ellen came into the bay and called out from a short distance away, so as not to startle him. 

Sputnik made a low grunting noise in echo from her position in the front driver’s foot well curled up on Dean’s flannel. Her tail thumped twice when Ellen approached but otherwise she remained still. 

Ellen smiled and shook her head, “Sam’s getting ready to head out for his meeting. Wanted me to ask if you felt like going.”

Dean grunted and shifted his feet against the concrete. 

“There’s going to be food.”

Another grunt.

Ellen turned over a bucket and sat, rested her elbows on her knees. “You feeling ok?”

“Feel fine… Not too happy about this oil filter but—“

“Not what I meant,” She folded her fingers together; “Jo and Sam are worried about you… I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried too.” 

Dean snorted and after a breath hooked his hands on the Impala’s frame and dragged himself out from beneath her. He had grease and oil on his hands, smears on his shirt, and across his forearms and face, “Why? I’m fine.” 

Ellen raised an eyebrow; “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You’ve been really quiet since you got back. And not the normal kind of quiet.”

Dean pulled himself under the car again. “Just not much to say.”

“Well, what IS there to say?”

“Nothing.”

“Uh-huh.”

He let out his breath in a whoosh and scrubbed the back of his wrist against his brow, felt the greasy smear of oil against his skin and reached for the flashlight he’d had magnetized to the frame. “I really don’t know what you want me to say. I’m fine… I—I gotta deal with this on my own.”

“You don’t have to—“

“This, yeah… Yeah I do. It’s not something I know how to explain. I don’t know if it can be explained. I just—“ He rubbed his brow again, felt tiny particles of grit amid the oil, dirt from the floor or the underside of the car; “I don’t know.”

“Well, maybe if you try.”

“I’d rather not.”

“You know I’m not going to judge. I’m trying to help. But if you don’t want to talk to me about it, that’s fine. I just hope you know that you can’t keep it bottled up. It’s not like whiskey, this doesn’t get better with age.” 

He shoved himself out from under the car again and sat up, arms crossed over the frayed knees of his jeans. It took a moment, deep breaths and a hand cautiously over the left side of his head; “What do you want me to say? I felt him disappear… When Jesse—when he turned Cas into that—When he changed him, I felt it. It was like I’d been shot… I felt it, and I felt this—this emptiness when he was gone. And I’ve—I’ve been trying to tell myself for months—MONTHS that the only reason I’m so attached is because of what happened with the Djinn… But that. I didn’t imagine that. I felt it and I…” He gave a full body shiver, “I can’t do it… I thought I could, but I can’t,” Dean swallowed a jagged feeling in his throat, like a shard of cornchip had gotten stuck in there and he had to force it down or choke to death. 

“You can’t what?”

He flexed his hands open and closed, reached up compulsively and pulled at his earlobe. 

“You can’t what, Dean?”

Color rose swiftly to his cheeks and his eyes flicked to the side, found a couple leaves curled and brown and lost under some of Bobby’s shelving units. They’d probably been there since last fall. He inhaled deeply and his hands opened purposefully slow, fingers lacing together.

“Dean,” Ellen’s chin tipped toward her chest, “I don’t speak Stubborn Jackass, you’re actually going to have to say something.”

His jaw shifted and he snuffed, as if his nose were running. “There’s nothing to say,” He pulled at his ear again.

“Well, you’re doing a shitty job of not saying anything. You’re worked up about something, so spill.” 

His face pinched impatiently, almost angrily; “I don’t—know. Okay? I don’t know. It’s just—he—I felt what he— I want… I don’t know what I want!”

“Well, that’s fine.” 

“I just—I just want this to be easy! It was easy with women. I mean, there was none of this—“ He made a clawing motion at his chest, lips rolled back from his teeth in a snarl, “—THIS! I could see this beautiful woman and buy her a drink and if she was willing, well that’s great! If not—oh well! But it never—it didn’t FEEL like this—There’s something wrong with me!” His eyes widened.

Ellen’s eyes softened; “There’s nothing wrong with you—“

“Yes, there is,” Dean came to his feet, hands in his hair, “More than the whole creepy-crawlie-don’t-touch-me-sick-to-my-stomach bullshit… I’m dealing, OK? I’m TRYING, but it’s HIM!” He gestured vaguely eastward; “Even right now I know where he is! I KNOW! I can feel it in my chest!” He pounded his knuckles against his sternum; “What happened in Alliance wasn’t my imagination! I FELT it. I FELT it and it was real and I don’t know what the fuck to do!” His voice had become thin and high pitch in his desperation, eyes wide, body curled inward in something like fear.

Ellen lifted a hand, in hopes of calming him a little; “Take a breath and start from the beginning. What happened in Alliance?”

Dean nudged his creeper out of the way, sat his foot on it like a skateboard and pushed it back and forth for a while, hip leaned against the Impala’s rear fender. “Something happened with Cas… I don’t know what. Not really, but Something happened. I mean it’s been there for a while, I look at him and it feels like I’m gonna hurl,” His hands rubbed together, fingers squeezing, eyes flicking back and forth, “B-but not in a bad way, it’s a good kind of sick—and he—I… I can feel him—not just like t-the packaging, yanno? But, like HIM HIM… The glowy, celestial rainbow HIM! And it’s familiar. It’s the same, but it can’t be— but it is! But, when he came back, when he looked at me—when he saw me, he felt— I felt him—I—I can’t. I can’t trust it… It can’t be real!”

The pain in his voice was palpable and Ellen reached for him, tried to draw him into her arms. “Dean—It’s OK, It’s OK!” 

He stepped back, eyes wide, hand up to ward her off, shaking like he was trying to fly apart at the seams; “No—Don’t… It’s not OK. It’s not. It can’t be okay because It’s not Cas—It— I look at him and I see Cas, OK? But sometimes I don’t—sometimes I look at him and I think ‘that body doesn’t belong to him. You’re putting Jimmy into these situations and he doesn’t want this. He tried to fight you off. You’re doing the same thing to him that the demons did to you!’ And I know- I KNOW that as soon as this is over, if we don’t all die in the process, he’s gonna give Jimmy his body back and that’ll be the end of it. He’ll leave me like everyone else and I’m—I’m just so tired of it! I want this all to be easy like it used to be! I want it to not hurt like this because it’s not fair—and I know life isn’t fair, I KNOW, but why the fuck do I feel this way—Why do I feel HIM if I –can’t have it? What kind of sick game is Fate, or God, or Lucifer, or whoever dealt the cards, trying to play! Why is it my responsibility! Why do I have to be a goddamned hero! Was this all planned? Does it MEAN anything? Or is this part of the whole ‘torture Dean until he says yes’ thing? Because if that’s what this is I’m done playing. I might as well have stayed in Hell if that’s what this is! At least THAT didn’t hurt like this!”

Ellen flinched back in shock, felt tears of her own burning the edges of her eyes; “Oh, sweetie—“

His face crumpled and he pointed at her threateningly “Don’t. Just don’t… You don’t understand. I’m weak, I get it. I really-really do. I’m pathetic and disgusting and broken and I want him— I want it to be real, but it’s not. It can’t be. It’s a trick, its part of their game. They’ll let me have it then take it away to make me say ‘yes’, and I… I can’t. I WON’T!” And with a shuddering breath he turned and strode quickly into the maze of Bobby’s junkyard.

Ellen followed, called out to him and had to jog to catch up, snagged his shirt sleeve and pulled. 

He batted at her, defensively, like an animal ready to bite in fear and pain, chin up, eyes wide—But she slapped his hands away and caught him around the chest. He struggled for a minute—in earnest, trying to get away from her.

“Let me go—Ellen, I mean it!” But even as he struggled she could feel the fight going out of him. Felt it when with a shuddering, wet breath he surrendered, bowed his face into her hair and wrapped his arms so tightly around her she could barely breathe. 

She’d heard him sobbing, had sat beside him after nightmares, listened to his fears and confessions and hopes—but now there was quiet. She recognized the soft hitching of his breath, the wetness that seeped into her hair, but there were no words, no sound save a bird squawking as it flew overhead.

She didn’t say anything. Didn’t know what she could say even if she’d had the words. 

It wasn’t fair. It really, really wasn’t. The fact that this whole situation with Castiel could, in fact, be a manipulation weighed heavily on her mind. It was cruel. So cruel she couldn’t imagine it possible that angels would stoop to such a level, but that’s why it made so much sense! Angels had put Sam in a goddamned wheelchair, what’s to say they hadn’t done this too?

She released him slowly, fitted her hands to either side of his head and drew him down, kissed his brow in hopes of offering some kind of comfort, hollow as it may seem. She led him inside by the hand and nudged him into a chair at the table. Watched from the corner of her eye as he bowed his head into the cavern of his arms, he seemed diminished, more so than usual. A ghost of himself. Ellen wiped the pads of her fingers over her eyes and rummaged through the cabinets for something—anything really—that she could slap together to make some approximation of comfort food. Good stuff. The kind of food she’d served on Sundays at the Roadhouse. 

Sam made a noise from the Den, shoved half the partition open and rolled in, seemed to hesitate when he saw his brother, and the way Ellen was knocking canned beans around in the cupboards. “Uh—“ He swallowed audibly; “Everything OK?”

“Yep!” Ellen said without turning around; “Just trying to find that can of peaches I saw the other day. Think I’ll try a cobbler.”

She could feel Sam’s expression twisting into wary disbelief. Wanted to turn and snap at him, but bit her tongue.

“Yeah,” Sam said slowly. The wheels of his chair made soft crackling sounds in the dust on the linoleum as he rounded the table; “Dean? I’m… I’m gonna go to the—uh—the meeting… You wanna tag along? Jo’s got a headache so she’s…”

Dean’s chair scuffed against the floor as he stood. Ellen’s whole body tensed in anticipation. 

Dean rubbed his forearm over his face; “Yeah… yeah, let me just…” He made for the bathroom.

Ellen pressed her abdomen into the edge of the counter hard enough that she felt it grate against her pelvis. Turned and stared at the hallway, watched Dean’s shadow moving, stripping out of his stained shirt and disappearing down stairs to search for a clean one. 

“Ellen?” Sam’s voice was pitched low in concern.

“Yeah, Sam?”

“What happened?”

She swiped her fingertips over her eyes; “Just don’t push him, OK? Don’t let the group push him…”

“What happened,” It was no longer a request.

Ellen glanced at him with her lips compressed, tried to convey the urgency through her gaze because she simply didn’t have the words.

Sam’s face became grim, eyes flicking to the side, as if he could peer down the hall and into the basement and read his brother’s thoughts. He turned back to Ellen after a moment of thought and nodded. He rolled out onto the porch to wait without another word.

Dean muttered something loudly enough from downstairs that Ellen could hear his voice, but not the words. It sounded angry, frustrated, and ashamed so she turned back to the cabinet to distance herself from the situation.

A few minutes later Bobby’s truck rumbled back into the yard. 

Ellen’s heart was beating too quick, hands frozen on the countertop, a can of peas in one hand, and tuna in the other. 

Dean appeared again, pulling a faded black t-shirt over his head. He paused at the coat rack and took down one of Sam’s darker hooded jackets, tugged it on and sidestepped Bobby as he entered. 

“Where you goin?” Bobby called after him, curiously. “You alright?”

But Dean didn’t answer. 

“Dean?” Bobby caught the screen door as it slapped toward the jamb and followed the younger man with his eyes. “Dean!”

Outside Sam called for the dog, chuckled as she yapped and waddled over. A moment later the Prius’ doors shut and the engine started. 

Bobby watched them go and made a soft grunt of confusion; “Should I be concerned?”

Ellen turned away, jaw set, fighting to keep her breath even.

Bobby set about washing his hands furiously at the sink. “At least tell me it ain’t serious. If it’s just him and that lovesick angel that’s one thing, but if it’s serious I deserve to know.”

Ellen didn’t respond.

“Ellen, it ain’t serious, is it? It’s not Michael or Lu—“ His voice rose suddenly, wet hands slapping against the edges of the sink; “And I’ll be damned if it ain’t that deer again!”

And Ellen shoved off from the counter, spun on her heel and made for the door. “Anything important in that shed?”

“What? No… Why? Ellen?” Bobby’s voice was suddenly soft, almost scared. He swabbed his dripping hands against the front of his shirt and followed her; “Hey, what’re you—“

Her thin little hand wrapped clean around the barrel of his Infield and as he watched she worked the bolt, brought it up to her shoulder, and took aim.

One shot.

BANG!

There was suddenly a hole in the side of his tire shed.

Ellen lowered the rifle and huffed out an explosive breath of relief. She turned and shoved the gun into Bobby’s arms; “I like steak pink, not bloody. I’ll do the potatoes,” And she let the door slap shut behind her.

Bobby stood there stunned, watched her disappear into the den, then turned toward the garden. He craned his neck, trying to see over the tomato plants, then turned back to the house, mouth turned up in a gleeful little grin; “Yes, Ma’am!”

0-0-0

The ride into the city was torturous, Sam kept giving him sideways looks and asking if he was OK, or commenting that he had engine oil in his hair.

Dean tried to ignore him, focused on the horizon, the clouds and the evening sun.

Eventually Sam stopped talking entirely.

Dean hadn’t really ever been to the Sioux Falls Municipal Building before. Hadn’t had a reason, or the desire to, in all honesty. He thought, maybe, as a kid he’d gone with Bobby to a yard sale in the parking lot, because the front of the building seemed vaguely familiar in the kind of way that made him think, perhaps, he’d seen it before, but not in a way that said the reason for his visit had had a real purpose. 

Sam parked at the back of the building in a tiny lot beside the dumpsters. There were two other men there, both in wheelchairs. One of the men was missing both legs below the knee, and the other wore a business suit and seemed to be in a similar position as Sam. The men looked up when Sam popped open his door.

“Check it out!” the amputee shouted; “Sam’s got his wheels rolling now!”

Sam grinned. Dean hadn’t seen him smile like that in a long time. 

“Shaved the beard I see,” Sam waited until Dean had pushed his chair up within reach before he unsnapped his safety belt. 

“Yeah, Stacy said if she’d wanted to kiss a bush she woulda’ dated a girl.” 

Dean choked. The guy in the suit laughed.

Sam cleared his throat; “Chad, Ryan—this is—uh- This is my brother.”

The man in the suit rolled toward the railing with a smile and stuck his hand through, “Ryan Carter, Sam talks about you a lot.”

The amputee checked a hand in the air; “Chad Browning, nice to meecha’!”

Dean nodded and shook hands, played respectable adult even though it made him uncomfortable. 

“Sam says you travel a lot for work,” Chad folded his hands on his lap and leaned forward a little. “I have to admit, Bounty Hunting sounds a lot more fun than Loan Adviser.”

Dean pulled his lips into a grin, hoped it looked genuine; “Gets kind of rough sometimes, but it’s not all bad.”

Sam made an exasperated noise, “Dean—Your—Sputnik won’t get out of the car.”

Dean turned with a sigh, ambled over, and peered in where she’d curled up in the rear driver’s seat. She looked up at him with shining brown eyes and sighed, tail thumping hopefully.

Dean patted his leg and pointed to the ground; “Come on.”

She glanced away as if she hadn’t heard him.

Sam looked up at his brother, nose wrinkled; “You still don’t think she’s fat?”

Dean ground his teeth, and plucked the dog up, hand on her chest, and tucked her bulk under his arm like a football. “Shut up.” 

Chad’s eyes lit up the moment he saw Sputnik and he slapped at Ryan’s shoulder urgently; “Ohm’god, hold me back—hold me back, bro!” 

Ryan swatted at him; “What th—knock it off!”

Dean cocked up an eyebrow and glanced over his shoulder to make sure Sam was coming up the ramp okay. 

“Is that her?” Chad said excitedly, eyes locked on Sam, “Is that her?”

Sam was grinning like an idiot; “Yeah, that’s her.” 

Dean looked back and forth between the two of them and may or may not have held Sputnik a little closer to his chest, squeezing just enough that her tongue popped out between furry lips. 

Chad’s eyes widened and his hands lifted to his mouth; “Lookit’ her little face!”

Dean turned to Sam with an accusatory scowl, but Sam was still grinning. “Chad likes Corgis.”

“As food?” Dean glanced at the other man warily.

Ryan chuckled.

Sam rolled his eyes. 

Sputnik was wiggling in Dean’s arms, tail thumping as Chad continued to talk about her ‘little face’ or ‘little feets’. The more he talked, the more excited she got. Dean finally had enough of her struggling and sat her on the concrete, felt moderately betrayed when she waddled over to the other man and put her paws on his knee so he could shove both hands into her fur and vigorously scratch. He found a spot on her chest just below her collar, and as he scratched, her rear left leg started thumping.

Sam’s eyes widened and he let out an aborted laugh. 

Dean rolled his eyes and leaned his shoulders testily against the wall, arms crossed high over his chest. 

A few seconds later the door swung open and an older, white haired woman stuck her head out. “Sorry for the delay, I had to track down maintenance to get the key.”

“Hey, Janie,” Chad said enthusiastically; “Look who it is!” He pressed Sputnik’s face between his hands and looked up at her with a broad grin on his face.

“Oh, who is this little dear!” She held the door open.

“It’s Sputnik!” Ryan said, leaning forward to scratch the dog behind the ear. 

“Oh, well, that’s lovely!” Janie said with a smile, she met Dean’s gaze kindly and held out her hand; “You must be Sam’s brother Dean.”

He scratched his neck uncomfortably and hesitantly shook her hand.

“I’m so glad he finally convinced you to come!” Janie tipped her head to the side; “I’m Doctor Jane Holmes, I mediate the group.”

“I—I’m Dean.”

She nodded and Dean felt like an idiot. He’d cultivated an irrational dislike of psychologists and this woman’s entire demeanor screamed SHRINK, from the gray flowing lines of her clothes, to the artistic pile of her snowy hair on her head. She made Dean decidedly nervous. “Yeah… uh—nice to meet you.” 

By the time Dean got in the door Sam was already halfway down the hall and Chad was jamming a finger into the elevator call button. The building held a low odor, like feet and bad plumbing, the subtle hint of Pine Sol and not ten feet into the building Dean wanted to turn and run, but couldn’t because Sputnik had decided Chad was her new best friend and was riding on the man’s lap with her tongue lolling out. 

The elevator was small, too small for all of them to fit at once. Sam, Chad, and Ryan went up first and Dean heard the car rattle all the way up to the second floor. It came down again with a low sound like whale song and Dean had the irrational urge to kill it with something. Maybe fire. 

The elevator doors opened and Dean curled his nose up, the car was an ugly green color with stained tile on the floor and there were a few ubiquitous names and initials scratched into the paint. 

Janie didn’t try to speak to him on the ride up, which Dean found strangely unsettling. Didn’t psychologists want you to talk? Didn’t they want to find something abnormal about you? Weren’t they really gung-ho about the whole, drugged to the gills, menace to society, lobotomy bullshit?

The municipal building’s upper floors reminded Dean of a hospital. Stagnant, whitewashed hallways, same smell, old brown and silver water fountains where the water only dribbled up out of the spout like it had no will to even splatter. Dean felt as if he could sympathize with it.

There were voices from another room down the hall, soft chatter, and a few women were standing together by the window with crumpled tissues in their fists. 

“If you don’t want to stay for the meeting, there’s a TV room at the end of the hall, I can unlock it for you,” Janie said helpfully, her hand felt strange against Dean’s elbow, even through the fabric of his shirt and borrowed jacket. He didn’t like the shiver that worked up his spine. 

“No, no, I’m good,” Dean entered the room and found a group of chairs spaced into a circle. Thought it was just like some of the crap off TV and wanted to spin on his heel and leave, but Sputnik was making nice with Destiny and Sam was pulled up beside her talking quietly with a little grin on his face. Chad and Ryan were at the back of the room, stacking doughnuts and shortbread cookies on tiny paper plates. 

There were more people, people Dean didn’t know. Their colors all seemed to fill the space and mesh into golds and greens and ambers and Dean felt exposed and all alone, like a circus side show. Kind of wished Sputnik was beside him because then at least he wouldn’t feel like a sore thumb. He rubbed his hands together, found his palms were damp, and compulsively started scratching the little flecks of oil and grit from under his nails, rubbed his palms on his jeans because, fuck it all, he smelled like sweat and engine grease and he hadn’t had the sense to go upstairs and splash on some cologne because he’d just wanted OUT of the house. AWAY and now here he was in a room full of strangers—

His heart was beating too quick. The dull chatter and hum of the heating system, coupled with that stagnant smell seemed to ramp up and up and up in his head until the clicking of chairs was the clatter of chains, and the airplane engine sound of Sam’s oxygen concentrator, coupled with that of a woman’s across the room were suddenly bone saws and Dean’s vision started to shrink in at the edges. 

His lips felt numb.

“Dean, dear?” Janie put a hand on his elbow and Dean’s skin crawled. 

He pulled away, hoped it wasn’t so much of a lurch and seemed more gentle than what he feared had happened. He put a hand up, fingers splayed and waved it between them; “Yeah, I—I need some air,” A smile that felt more like a showing of teeth.

There was the window at the end of the hall, an oasis. Dean made for it. Some of the woman standing near it darted into their room with startled noises but one remained, shoulders squared, jaw pushed forward defensively. 

Dean fought with the window for half a breath before the slim side panel slid open and he could stick his head out. Wedged one shoulder out as well just for the added distance and leaned his hip against the sill, gulping in air like a dying man. 

“Get a grip,” He muttered and smacked himself on the cheeks a few times, “It’s just a frickin’ support group!” His stomach turned. Support group, how pathetic was that? Boy, if Dad could see him now—

What, you need to go cry about your problems to some shrink? You think you’re the only one with issues? You don’t see me out there sobbing to some quack! There are people out there in worse shape than you and they don’t need no damned shrink! They just deal with it like any normal person! Nobody cares, Dean! Nobody cares so you might as well just buttonup and grow a pair!

It was only then that he noticed one of the women was still standing there. She seemed less defensive now, more concerned and uncomfortable than anything. Pretty in a young Audrey Hepburn kind of way with short black hair and big eyes. She was dressed in loose jeans and sneakers, topped in an olive green sweater with the sleeves rolled up.

“You OK?” She said with her nose wrinkled. 

“Yeah, peachy,” Just waiting to see if I’m going to vomit out of a two story window. 

“Sure… Are you gonna be there long?”

Dean rolled his eyes, “Look, I didn’t mean to interrupt your knitting club—“

“Knitting club?” Her face contorted; “You stomp over here and scare half my girls and you think it’s a knitting club?”

“I didn’t mean to scare anyone, OK? I just needed some air—“

“Well, can you hurry up? You’re making some of us nervous.”

Dean pulled his head back into the building and stared at the woman—could see the navy and lavender of her soul branched out around her protectively, angry. The room behind her was practically empty save five or six women, a small group of which were standing close together around a coffee pot and a small package of sugar cookies. The rest were staring at him, some with veiled hatred, a few with disdain and muted fear. 

“Hey, Dean?” 

He turned, spotted Sam in the doorway near the opposite end of the hall.

“We’re getting ready to start… You OK?”

Dean worked his tongue at the back of his teeth and pulled the window shut. He tried to ignore the bitter taste in the back of his throat, or that woman glaring at him as if she intended to set him on fire. He didn’t want to be here. Not really. The only reason he’d agreed to come was to get away from Bobby’s house and Ellen’s questioning. He didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to feel PRESSED to talk, he wanted to forget. Push everything down until it popped and oozed out like a pimple, then he could drown it in alcohol and move on. 

He rubbed a hand over his face. He knew pushing it down wasn’t a good idea, he’d tried it before with this and wound up—fuck, he’d wound up snapping and hurting himself and Sam had… Sam had been forced to take care of him, Ellen, and Bobby had been forced to take care of him, and Dean was tired of it. He was tired of feeling like a burden, tired of feeling like he was never going to ‘get over’ this. 

You can’t, you know you can’t. You’re ruined. 

He could see it in Sam’s face, the realization, the acknowledgement. “Do you wanna go?”

He did, he really REALLY did. He didn’t want to be here anymore, not one bit. But this—this was helping Sam. This HELPED Sam. For some reason, talking and listening HELPED Sam… Why wouldn’t it help him? Why did Dean feel like he was tearing himself open and prying out all the hurt bleeding bits whenever he tried to talk about it? Whenever he tried to think about it. 

Janie stepped out around Sam and tilted her head welcomingly; “We’d like to have you join us, but if you’re uncomfortable that’s perfectly OK.”

Dean felt a strange ache in his hands and when he glanced down at them noticed he’d twisted his fingers together to the point his nail beds were turning purple. 

Janie glanced at the girl to Dean’s left, then to Dean and something flitted across her face. It was brief, more a shiver in the green of her color than any actual expression. 

Sam tilted his head up and addressed her in something akin to a whisper and he backed himself out of the room, turned and moved toward his brother. He smiled kindly at the woman in the green sweater and pitched his voice into that smooth, easy ‘sympathetic agent’ tone Dean kind of hated and envied at the same moment.

“Sorry,” He said, “Can you give us a minute?”

The woman nodded and retreated into her room, ushered her ‘girls’ toward the meager snacks with a smile and words of encouragement.

“Dean, can you hear me?” 

He nodded, swiped the heels of his hand over his face because his vision felt gummy and his skin tight. 

“What’s up, do you wanna go back to Bobby’s?”

“No, I’m fine—“

“You’re kind of not. You look awful, you’re shaking and I thought you were gonna swing at that girl—“

“She was jumping down my neck—“

“Hey—Hey!” Sam’s voice was still low, half volume, and he waved a hand beseechingly at Dean’s elbow, but didn’t touch… He didn’t touch. “Inside voice, okay?”

Dean leaned his hips back against the window sill and cupped a hand over his eyes. “I’m just havin’ a bad day.” 

“I can see that… W-what can I do?”

He inhaled deeply and let it out, swallowed and tried to whisper; “Nuthin’.” 

“Is it because of Casey?” Sam tilted his chin downward; “If—I mean, I didn’t know they’d be here tonight. I didn’t think…” He sighed, rubbed his palms on his jeans, then did it again; “C’mon, we’ll go.”

“No—“

“I don’t wanna sta—“

“Sam,” He rolled his head on his neck; “Don’t do this to me… I don’t understand why, but this is… it’s WORKING for you. Talking to those people is working for you,” I just wish I could find something that worked that well for me.

Sam exhailed mightily and tilted his head back to the ceiling, “Do you wanna go?”

He did, but he shook his head.

Sam knew his brother’s stubbornness, had it himself. “I’m not going back in there and leaving you sitting in the hall.”

Dean motioned to the stairwell door to his right. “I’ll go sit in the car, maybe get some sleep.”

“You’re not gonna sit in the freakin’ car,” Sam rubbed his brow in agitation. “Do you want in the TV room? I don’t know if it’s got cable, I think it’s mostly just kids movies.”

“Cartoons are OK,” Dean rubbed his aching fingers. 

Sam nodded, then nodded again as he reached for the wheels of his chair; “Dean?”

He caught Sam’s eyes then had to look away because he couldn’t bear the contact.

“I wish you’d talk to someone… I mean, there’s only so much Ellen can do. Maybe it’s time to, I don’t know… Trust someone.” 

“We both know how that would end.”

For half a breath Sam seemed to burn brightly with rage and frustration, but in a blink he was calm again, had turned to focus on his own feet instead of Dean. “You’re not alone… Just—just remember that.”

Janie was already making her way down the hall with a key, met Sam’s eyes with a sad but encouraging nod. She unlocked the door and turned on the light, even went to the heating unit on the far wall under the windows and turned it on. “We don’t normally have adults in here, usually it’s just for the children of the members and a supervisor, but there’s a game at the school tonight, so…”

“It’s fine,” Dean didn’t want to talk, found the sound of his own voice grating. 

Janie turned the TV on and handed over the remote. “The rest room is down the hall, to the left of the elevator. If you want coffee, or something to eat, just come right on in.”

Dean wanted her to shut up, didn’t want her accommodations, if anything he wanted her to be harsh and waspish. He wanted that girl in the green sweater to yell at him some more because that’s what he deserved. It’s what he deserved for being so pathetic. It’s what Dad would have done… What… 

“I don’t know what Sam’s told you… about—About me, but it’s… I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

Dean snorted, “Tell me another one.”

There was a soft knock at the door and when Dean looked up he thought it was the girl in the green sweater again, but instead it was Destiny holding Sputnik’s lead. “I think she tired herself out,” She came into the room leading Sputnik and handed the lead over. She hesitated, bit her lip and spoke quickly; “I know it’s difficult, really I do… But talking about it does help… So, if you change your mind, Sam’s got a chair for you, and he saved the last jelly doughnut. He said you liked those best.” 

And that, possibly, just made it worse. 

Janie shut the door as they left and Dean stood there staring at the remote in his hand, listening to Sputnik’s toenails click on the tile as she searched for a warm, soft place to lie down, wound up claiming a beanbag chair in the corner and curling into a fluffy, plump ‘C’ shape with her nose tucked under her paws. 

Dean tried one of the stiff chairs for a while and let ‘The Land Before Time’ play for some kind of background noise, but wound up sitting against the wall beside Sputnik running his hand through her fur. Little voices in his head that sounded like his father were chanting about sissy support groups and weepy women and damned head shrinkers and Dean could feel the tension building in his chest, anger and bitterness he didn’t usually allow himself to indulge in. He had a tendency to defend his father’s choices, or the ideas behind them, even though the result hadn’t always ended pleasantly. 

Pleasant? Fair? Bullshit. LIFE wasn’t fair. RESPONSIBILITY. DUTY. That’s all there was for a person like him.

He’d spent his life breathing and living that DUTY, spent forty years in hell because of it, and now here he was facing down his ‘destiny’ when he’d spent most of his adult years convinced there was no such thing. Only violence and pain for its own sake.

“I need a drink,” He laughed at the hollow sound of his own voice in the empty room. “Dealing with this shit was always easier when I could drink.”

Sputnik sighed and looked up at him with big doe eyes. 

Dean looked down at her and snorted, scratched his head because talking to the dog had helped before, crazy as it sounded. Crazy as it made him feel; “Am I wrong about Cas? About this thing with Cas?” He wetted his lips; “Or am I just—just overcomplicating things because I’m scared? Or is this just a manipulation. Was it all just a manipulation,” He glanced toward the door and back to the dog, rubbed a twinge from his eyebrow. “I’ve got too much stuff in my head. I feel like I’m gonna pop—Like a zit or something… I can’t deal with it. How am I supposed to deal with this?”

Sputnik stared at him. 

Dean stared back.

She thumped her tail, thinking maybe he was playing a game or something, Dean didn’t know. He didn’t speak dog. 

“I don’t wanna cry about my shitty life to strangers. I don’t want ‘em lookin’ at me. Everybody’s life is shitty, that’s how the world works. I just…” He clenched his jaw, felt like maybe this was some sort of turning point. Like that moment years ago when he realized there would be no happily ever after for him. When he realized his wants didn’t matter because he had Responsibility. One of those epiphany moments that after it has passed, like an earthquake, nothing is the same. 

Dean nodded, jaw pushed forward as he fought to swallow a burning feeling in his throat. He snuffed, looked at the floor to focus himself, and with a grunt of sore muscles, pushed to his feet. 

He turned off the TV and VCR and called quietly to Sputnik when he reached the door, felt like his throat was clogged with engine grease. 

She sighed and heaved herself up, waddling slowly over with a somehow annoyed crinkle to her furry brow. 

“Maybe Sam was right,” Dean said, mostly to himself, “Maybe you are getting kind of pudgy.” 

The door to Sam’s Group was open, that really was the only reason Dean went in. The one across the hall from the TV room had been shut tightly, but this one… If he’d had to open it Dean would probably have just gone to sit on the sidewalk by the car, or walk to a bar or something. There was one close. 

It was like walking into a bar and hearing calm, happy chatter from a party in the corner. Jokes and complaints about coworkers or spouses. It didn’t sound like what Dean had expected at all.

One of the women was speaking. She was middle-aged, with ginger hair lightly flecked with light blonde or white, it was difficult to tell. Her hands were moving with every word she spoke, something about not being hired because of her deafness, that the manager felt she wouldn’t ‘fit in’. That it would be too difficult for her because, how could someone with total hearing loss work in a bank? The customers at the pneumatic tubes can only be contacted via microphone!

“I’ve worked at a bank for twelve years and never had an issue!” She said, leaned forward in her seat, “The other employees don’t mind letting me work the desk instead of the window. They’re very understanding. But, I haven’t had so much as a face-to-face interview since my branch closed, and it’s the same excuse every time; ‘I wouldn’t be a good fit!’” She made a violent gesture tapping her temples with both fists and half the people in the room started laughing. 

“Wait, wait,” Sam was chuckling too, waved his hand a little to get her attention, “What does that mean?” He repeated the sign.

The woman grinned, nose wrinkled and repeated it slowly with one hand, “Asshole.”

Destiny was laughing, one leg crossed over the other hand over her mouth as she chewed something. She was the first one to spot Dean, grinned and swallowed then motioned to the seat between herself and Sam. She said nothing, but Janie and a few others turned and acknowledged him with a tilt of their heads. 

Sputnik jogged over to Chad and with a happy coo the man hefted her onto his lap and began a vigorous scratch from the top of her head to the middle of her back. “You look more like a Cotton Ball than a Sputnik!”

The teenaged boy to Chad’s left chuckled and reached over to pat Sputnik’s fur, like he wasn’t sure what it would feel like.

Sam was smiling, a little thing, but it caught Dean as more sincere than any of his wider ones usually did. 

“ANYWAY!” The woman said with a wipe of imaginary sweat from her brow; “My week was pretty shitty.”

Ryan flipped his hand in her direction; “I’ve told you to come talk to Matilda about getting on at Century.”

She nodded, but rolled her eyes; “I’ve been a competitor for twelve years, would she really even consider?”

Ryan shrugged and gestured to himself; “I remember what it’s like, trust me. I worked in private accounting for three years and when Nat and I moved here to be with her folks I had to start fresh. Took me a year and a half just to get an interview… Just try it, worst that would happen is she says ‘no’. In which case, we’ll both be looking for work. I take issue with people and corporations that discriminate.”

“I’ll think about it,” She sighed and looked around the group then gestured with the flat of her hand; “What about Sam? How was your week?”

Sam made a low sound in his throat and fiddled with the tube coming from his concentrator; “Uh—Well,” He scrubbed his palms on his knees a few times; “I started driving again,” He glanced over at Dean and down with a grin; “Kind of Dean’s fault actually… He said I either drive, or we ride in his car—Dean’s car’s a classic and it doesn’t have seat belts, so… I didn’t really have a choice—“ He took a breath and looked right at Dean when he spoke; “But I’m glad he did it. I needed a push, it made me realize that things might really be OK—not great, but they might be OK. I can still do almost everything I used to—I even crawled up some stairs—“

Dean felt his face pinch, it was probably the most painful grin he’d ever experienced. 

“—But I managed. I did it. It sucked, but I did it and I’m feeling a little better about myself and what the future has in store for me.” 

A few of the people in the circle, Chad and Ryan included, clapped a little. Made encouraging comments. Janie scribbled something in her notebook; “And how was it? Driving for the first time?”

Sam pushed his hair off his brow; “Uh—Kind of weird… I’m not used to the whole, hand control thing yet. I have to be fairly focused to keep from speeding I guess… But it—it was really freeing, realizing that I can still do it, just differently.”

“Just don’t get lead palms,” Ryan snorted, “I’ve got four speeding tickets and all of them are because of the radio—I get into the beat and the next thing I know I’m doing seventy-nine in a fifty.” 

Sam grinned, “I don’t think I’ll risk the radio yet. Dean’s a big enough distraction.”

Laughing. 

This… They were telling stories and laughing. It was—it wasn’t as intimidating as Dean had feared. It was like sitting around the table with Ellen, Bobby, and Jo, just shooting the shit so to speak. 

The teenager beside Chad was next. His name was Calvin. He’d had a good week too, he and his mother got an acceptance letter from a charity Dean had never heard of, and they were sending an application for sponsorship with a training facility for service dogs.

“It’ll take a few weeks for the paperwork to go through,” He spoke slowly, “But I’m excited,” He patted Sputnik’s head again, then looked right at Dean; “How long did you have to wait?”

Dean faltered and worked his tongue around the backs of his teeth; “Oh—uh… Well, I was lucky. Sputnik and me kind of Clicked, yanno? It’s rare that a dog can—can alert at the onset of a-a seizure… It’s all really hazy to me. I was on a lot of different medications,” He glanced at Sam for help.

“It was about a month, two months,” Sam put in helpfully. “We had to travel out of state for an… an interview. And a friend of ours actually sponsored the match, so, it may have gone through faster than what you’ll encounter.”

Calvin nodded, still grinning, and turned dreamy eyes to Sputnik; “I hope my dog likes me as much as yours likes you… I’ve never had a dog before.”

“I’m sure it will,” Dean said, leaning back a little in his seat. He could feel Sam’s eyes on him, crossed his arms and muttered from the corner of his mouth; “Don’t get all misty, Sammy, your eyeliner’ll run.” 

That earned a few chuckles and laughs from the room.

Janie smiled and motioned with the end of her pen, “What about you, Dean?” She said, casually; “We’ve heard a few details about you from Sam, but, if you feel like sharing why not tell us a little about yourself?”

Sam swallowed, he was still smiling, but it was tense, forced, Sam was suddenly scared, he was just good at hiding it. Dean would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little frightened as well.

His voice died in his throat. He could feel the weight of every gaze on him like a coffin nail, pinning him down. “Uh… I—“ He cleared his throat; “I can’t talk about work, classified,” There were a few scattered, silent nods and Dean cleared his throat in relief. “But I’m… Things are OK, I—I mean not GREAT, but they’re… okay… I—“ He turned his eyes to Sam, saw the reassurance and curiosity and felt kind of nauseated. He chuckled, forced the sound out because he didn’t know what else to do; “I don’t wanna be a buzz kill, maybe someone else should—“

“You’re not a buzz kill,” Another woman spoke, this one in thick glasses with a folded white cane across her lap. She was younger, early twenties, blonde, average build, homely in an uncomplicated, no frills way. “Everybody has a bad week every so often… It’s what makes you really appreciate the good ones.” 

There were a few murmured words of agreement and Dean felt practically crushed under their stares, didn’t like being the center of attention because then if he screwed up, if he wasn’t acceptable, they may call him out on his bullshit.

He focused on his hands, rubbed them together and tried to keep himself from folding his fingers together and SQUEEZING. “I—uh—“ He swallowed, “I didn’t have a good week… I—I had a really—REALLY bad week actually, and I—uhm—It-it’s not even really because of the whole,” He made a clawed motion at the left side of his head; “—epilepsy thing—which sucks, but that’s a different story,” he wetted his lips; “—I’ve… As if you haven’t noticed— but I have Issues. We’ll just call them Issues… With crowds… and people… and people touching me—uhm—“ He clenched his jaw and turned to Sam desperately; “How do you do this? I—I don’t have any idea what I’m doing.”

“You’re doing fine, just keep going.” 

Dean focused on his hands once more, anything but the people around him—Christ ANYTHING. 

“Some things—bad things—happened to me a while back. I won’t bore you with the details, but it… it involved the guy who did this—“ He flipped his fingers at his head; “He—he was one of the people I hunt down, and he got the drop on me… I’d known him before, we’d been… we knew one another and he…” Dean’s mouth twitched, he caught the half cringe, half urgent hopefulness plastered across Sam’s face and nearly bit his tongue in two, “Anyway… I… Some things happened this week that brought this all back up again and It’s difficult to deal with on top of other things so I…” He cleared his throat, “I’ve been kind of distant and stuff.”

“What other things?” Chad, of course it had to be Chad. Guy had usurped his dog now he was asking nosy questions Dean didn’t know how to answer. Didn’t know if he wanted to answer.

“Well, uh… I—“ He glanced at Sam but got only a miniscule nod, urging him to continue. Damn him. 

Dean felt his blood draining from his face, felt sweat beading on his brow—he shivered, “I—I don’t really feel comfortable talking about that.”

Chad seemed displeased, but didn’t push, just turned his attention back to Sputnik for a moment, “So this guy that caused your injury—you were like partners?”

Dean flinched, like he’d been slapped. “No… He—“ He opened and closed his mouth, “I met him because I made a rash decision and—uh—this was kind of a parting gift.”

Nobody said anything. Dean didn’t look up, just focused on his hands, felt something sour in his stomach. 

“He beat my head against the floor and choked me into unconsciousness… I—I had a-uh—“ He glanced at Sam with his brows drawn down, “What was it? Subterminal—“

“Subdural Hematoma.”

“—One of those the size of an orange. And my neck?”

Sam was tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair, soft barely audible popping sounds escaping between his lips. Dean knew those sounds, knew how upset Sam must be talking about this to be making them; “Two cracked cervical vertebrae, partially crushed trachea, swelling of the brain stem, swelling of the spinal cord. Broken nose, dislocated shoulder, dislocated jaw, cracked cheekbone, ruptured vessels in his… left? Left eye, and various contusions on his extremities,” Sam swiped the tip of his tongue over his lips, pressed his shoulders back into his chair in discomfort. Voice pitched as if speaking through pain; “He had a massive seizure in the ambulance and went into respiratory distress. He was comatose for about a week and the doctors didn’t think he would wake up…”

Chad’s face was pale; “Jesus. Did they get the guy?”

Dean folded his hands together and tried to ignore Sam nervously pressing the seams in his jeans.

Sam looked up, met Chad’s eyes solemnly; “Yeah… yeah, they got him.”

“That’s scary,” Calvin said, wrapping his arms around his chest; “I had a seizure once, when my blood sugar dropped. One minute I just felt sick, the next I woke up in the hospital.”

“Usually I get headaches—really bad headaches, and light hurts my eyes. Then it’s just like my muscles stop working. I-I haven’t had one in a couple months, so I’m grateful for that—“

Janie rapped her knuckles against the wood of her chair.

“—But I had a bad one a while back. It—It’s not something I want to repeat,” Dean stretched one leg out and raked his nails against the side of his thigh; “Sputs helps a lot, she can like smell it before it happens—Anyway the website said that’s likely what gives her the heads up—but she barks at me if she smells something off.”

Sam was grinning again; “And the bows? Are you gonna tell them about the bows?”

“Aw, screw you—“ Dean rubbed his face and propped an elbow on his knees; “Fine—She likes these stupid little bows that come with the dog shampoo—And she gets mad if I don’t put them on her after a bath and chews up my bootlaces.” 

Chad cackled.

The room seemed lighter. 

Dean seemed lighter. Guarded, but lighter. He didn’t say much else for the remainder of the meeting, while Bridget talked about her last ophthalmologist appointment, and that some rude old men at a restaurant she’d gone to in Tea had been making faces at her and kept trying to trip her. “I’m LEGALLY BLIND,” She said emphatically; “But I can see well enough to know when someone’s sticking their leg out in front of me.”

“I’d have kicked ‘em!” Chad said and beside him Calvin snorted. “What! I got prosthetics!”

“Violence isn’t always the answer,” Janie said—Sam thought unhelpfully.

“My server saw and told the manager and the manager asked them to leave—“ She lifted a hand halfway toward her ear, “So, if any of you are heading toward Tea anytime soon, ‘Willy’s’ is accessible and It has the Bri-Seal of Approval!” 

“Roadtrip!” Destiny said loudly, hand cupped conspiratorially against the edge of her lips.

Sam chuffed quietly. 

“Free Daiquiri on your birthday—IF you’re legal!” Bridget ticked a finger at Calvin with a narrowed eye. 

Janie laughed quietly, composed, asked if anybody else had something they would like to add. When everyone had replied in the negative she said with a smile that she was proud of everyone and that if anybody needed anything to please, not hesitate to call! 

And just like that the meeting was over. 

Chad and Ryan stole extra doughnuts and Calvin’s mother appeared to pick him up. She was a small, plump woman with brown hair, wore a Fareway Grocery apron under her jacket and carried a large denim purse with a tangle of key chains hanging on a loop from the zipper.

“Look!” Calvin said pointing to Sputnik; “Sam’s brother brought his dog! She can detect seizures.”

“That’s nice,” She smiled at Janie and went to her son, pushed his floppy hair back from his forehead, “Did you Check?”

Calvin nodded then turned to Dean with a bright smile; “Thanks for lettin’ me pet your dog!”

Janie waved them away politely when Sam offered to help clean up; “It’s nothing, I’m going to take these down to Casey. It looks like they’re having a long one.”

Sam nodded and moved toward Dean where he was waiting by the door with Sputnik under his arm. “I’ll take her,” He said, nodding toward the dog, “She looks exhausted.”

Dean nodded and let his brother settle Sputnik on his lap, “I gotta hit the can, I’ll be down in a minute.” 

Sam nodded and rolled gently toward the elevator; “Don’t make me wait!”

Dean didn’t go to the bathroom. He rubbed the back of his neck nervously and stepped back into the room with Janie, “Hey… Uh—I-Thanks, for lettin’ me crash the party.”

Janie gave her head a small, fond shake, “You’re more than welcome to ‘crash’ any of our meetings you want to.”

“Yeah… uh—I-I don’t do this normally—TALK, I mean. But this,” he gestured vaguely at the room, “This helps Sam in ways I can’t, so—”

“It seemed to help you too, you’re much more relaxed now than you were.” 

Dean hesitated thoughtfully, blinking; “I… I don’t know if I’d call this relaxed, but I guess you’re right.” 

Janie straightened, hands clasped together in front of her. “Dean… May I ask you a question about your injury and the man who caused them?”

He swallowed, but after a moment nodded. “I guess.”

“You’re in no way obligated to answer, and if I overstep my boundaries please tell me… but… This man who hurt you… Was it more than just a beating?”

Dean’s heart went from zero to sixty in a fraction of a second. “Did Sam say something—“

Janie shook her head, seemed relieved that someone knew; “No, dear… No, he hasn’t said anything,” She inhaled slowly and let it out, “I ask because I’m concerned. Do you have a support system at all? I ask because I usually mediate Casey’s group on Fridays, and if it’s something you might be interested in—”

“Casey? The girl in the green sweater.”

Janie nodded, “I think it would help you to talk about it,” Janie said softly. “If not in a group setting, then in private… with someone you trust. If you would prefer a professional ear,” She reached into the billowy pocket of her sweater and pulled out a small, ivory colored business card. She pressed it into Dean’s hand and held it there for a moment. “You just call, day or night.”

He hesitated, but nodded, a little unnerved. 

Janie nodded, swiped imaginary wrinkles from her clothes and with a muffled exclamation held out a small foam plate to him, on which was a doughnut dusted with powdered sugar. “Sam said you preferred the jelly filled.”

He took it, and didn’t say much of anything when Janie smiled and turned to collect the rest of the snacks, then disappeared out of the room with a scuff of her orthopedic shoes against the tile. 

0-0-0

Sam was already in the Prius, elbow in the open window chuckling at something Destiny had said. 

Dean was still carrying the doughnut when he made it to the car, gaze turned inward. 

Sam made a sound in the back of his throat; “Oh, hell no!” He locked the doors; “You’re not having that mess in my car. You eat it outside where the sugar doesn’t get in the upholstery!”

Dean scowled and leaned his hips against the front fender, back to Sam, the warmth of the Prius’ engine against his behind.

Sam and Destiny continued talking. Low and intimate and Dean wanted to fake a gag to tell them exactly what he thought of the situation. 

“I promise, it’ll be fun!” She said, pulling at the sleeve of his shirt. “I really think you’ll like it.”

“I don’t know, I’ll have to talk to him first. Dean isn’t one for vacations, not in his line of work.” 

“It’ll do you both some good,” She shoved his head playfully; “Come on, live a little!”

Sam smiled, laughed quietly; “When do you need an answer again?”

She rolled her eyes, “Okay, fine, I don’t need one until the middle of next month, but if I’m gonna need a bigger cabin I gotta let them know like ASAP before they’re all gone! October is the start of the busy season!”

Sam sighed, it was loud and meant to sound like she was twisting his arm; Dean really hated how people flirted, he was never so overt about it. 

Shut up.

“I’ll talk to him tonight and I’ll give you an answer Tuesday… So he’ll have a few days to think about it.” 

Dean rolled his eyes and spoke around his doughnut; “You two know I can hear you, right?”

Destiny snorted; “Well, cat’s outta the bag!”

Sam propped his jaw on his fist and gave Dean a look that said he hadn’t really been planning on broaching the subject at all, he’d been trying to dodge the topic, thanks a lot Dean.

Dean shrugged minutely and sucked jelly off his thumb.

“Okay,” Destiny bounced around the front of the Prius; “So, there’s this thing. It’s a ski lodge in Colorado.” 

“No kidding.”

“Well, they have certain slopes and cabins at the lodge specifically accessible for people with disabilities. I’ve always wanted to go, but the smallest accessible cabins they have left are five people. I already got Chad and his girlfriend to agree to come, so that’s three, and if you and Sam come we’ll be able to afford one—if we bring three more people we can upgrade and the cabin’ll have a sauna or a hot-tub.”

Dean shook his head, “I don’t do skiing.” 

The tension in Sam’s shoulders seemed to ease.

“Aw, come on!” Destiny propped a fist on her hip. She motioned to Sam with the flat of her other hand; “Sam really wants to go!”

Dean turned and regarded his brother. Yeah, sure, Sam ‘really’ wanted to go. The fake grin and nodding were real convincing. “I don’t do skiing, sorry.”

“Okay,” Destiny pressed her hands together, feet shoulder width apart; “Okay, what if I…” She rubbed her hands together, wrinkled her nose hopefully; “Cut your hair for free?”

Dean chewed his doughnut; “Keep talkin’.”

“—For three months?”

Dean cocked an eyebrow, unimpressed.

“Six?”

He dabbed at the extra powdered sugar on the empty plate with the dampened pad of his thumb.

“Okay, okay!” Destiny shook her hands; “I’ll cut your hair for free for eight months! Final offer!”

“I don’t do skiing.”

“They do Oktoberfest?”

Dean blinked, “I had a bad experience last time, really rather not repeat.” 

“Worse than drunkenly having a little German tattooed on your boob?”

Dean scoffed; “What? No way!”

She hooked her fingers in the V of her t-shirt and drew it aside. 

Dean saw a little cartoon face with a small feathered hat and the top half of Lederhosen- Oh, nipple! He slammed his eyes closed and turned away; “Damn.” 

“What, never seen a boob before?”

“No, I’ve seen boobs before, I’m just imagining how much that hurt.”

She snorted; “Like sticking my tit in a bee’s nest.” 

“Okay, are we done with the show and tell?” Sam said testily. “Ellen’s been sending me messages for half an hour.” 

“Aw!” Destiny cooed, “Shucks, your step mom is so much fun.” 

Dean choked. “Yeah, sure.” 

“Come ON, Dean!” 

Dean rolled his eyes and gave Destiny a wave as she ambled off toward her little yellow Neon. He folded the tiny paper plate in half and funneled the powdered sugar into his mouth.

Sam tapped his horn impatiently and Dean muttered, “Yeah-yeah, I heard you the first time!” And tossed the plate into the dumpster as he made his way to the passenger door.

Sam had his jaw clenched as he backed out of his parking space and headed toward the front of the building.

"Step mom?"

"Ellen's words, not mine."

Dean slouched in his seat, “I think that Destiny chick’s got the hots for you.”

“She’s got the hots for one of us,” Sam grumbled as he pulled the car into the street, “She showed you her boob for Christ sake, Dean.” 

Dean shrugged; “I just have that effect on some women.” 

Sam’s face twisted into something resembling a sneer; “I don’t get you, one minute you’re pining after Cas like a Shakespearian tween, the next you’re chasing tail like nothing happened!” 

Dean wrinkled his nose. “I’m not chasing tail! And the Cas thing is… it’s complicated, Sam. Really complicated, I mean—“

“Oh, right. ‘Complicated’, sure. What happened to ‘Cas was my fucking dream boat’? And what about Jamie? Your five time wonder? For as big a deal as you made it out to be, that second virginity didn’t last long, did it.”

Dean stroked his fingers over the curling fur behind Sputnik’s ears. 

The streetlights cast alternating orange and green and blueish light through the windows. Traffic lights glowed eerily from above creating the illusion that Dean had two shadows when he lifted his hand from Sputnik’s head to scratch his own. 

After a few blocks of tense silence Sam inhaled deeply and let it out; “I’m sorry… I don’t— That came out wrong.”

Dean didn’t look at him, had rolled his shoulders forward a little, eyes distant.

“She just frustrates me and—“

Nothing.

“I mean, at least you’ve still got some kind of feeling down there. I’m just—” He let his breath out in a huff. “Fuck… I’m sorry, okay?”

Dean was focused on something out the window, jaw tight, face pinched. He took a shuddering breath and held it, forced himself to swallow the burning lump in his throat, blinked away the flood in his eyes. “Sure you are,” There was a weight in his chest, cold and burning and unfathomable. Sam’s words had stung, like a blade dipped in acid, but the wound they struck wasn’t new. “You’re always sorry.”

“Dean, come on.”

“No.”

Sam’s teeth snapped together, cutting off the syllables building on his tongue. His hands shook. “Don’t—please, don’t do this. Not now, I’m SORRY—“

“I know you’re fucking sorry, but it still hurt goddamnit!” The anger seemed to come out of nowhere, like the sprout of a weed in Bobby’s herb garden; “This shit isn’t easy for me to deal with, alright? It’s hard enough for me to function on a daily basis without you snapping at me because some girl frustrates you!” His teeth were chattering, “Yes, alright? YES! You were right about Jamie—I couldn’t keep it up to save my life! It was humiliating and just the thought of her—or anybody else for that matter—touching me makes my skin crawl! This—this keeps me from freaking out, alright? The idea that I have a choice this time? That my body’s not been touched or taken advantage of, or used? That’s the only reason I haven’t clawed my goddamned veins out! Nobody’s touched me! I’ve got a clean slate and what happened downstairs doesn’t matter because this body—MY BODY—is new! And nobody’s going to touch me this time unless I want them to! Unless I say it’s OK! And if that makes you think I’m a pathetic excuse for a grown ass man then fine. FINE! But it’s My fucking choice and I don’t need your approval or acknowledgement! This is MY choice! It’s what I WANT! And I don’t give a SHIT what you think about it!”

Sam’s eyes were wide, mouth hanging open a little. He glanced at his brother and back to the road, then pulled into the first parking lot he could find, parked crooked across four different spots in his haste and killed the engine.

They stared at one another for a long time, just the quivering sound of Dean’s breath and the quiet chatter of his teeth.

Dean felt his face contorting defensively; “What?”

Sam inhaled deeply and let it out, took his hands off the wheel and rubbed his face; “Go on. Let me have it. Tell me what a fuckup I am.”

Dean’s eyes fell closed, shoulders sagging in defeat. “No.”

“I shouldn’t have said what I did. Alright? I’m SORRY! What do you want from me?”

“Nothing.”

“Look, I’m—I’m not OK. I am,” A sigh, “I am far from OK,” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “And it’s not right that I’m taking my frustrations out on you, but I don’t—” He ground his teeth, bared them to the world as if he intended to bite. "I don't get it!"

Dean stared at him. 

“You just… You won’t talk to me, and I think—Well, he’s just bottling it up again, because drowning himself in it is better than talking to me. And when you do it, when you talk to me it’s only because you’re being forced to! Because something’s happened and you have to explain yourself! Have to protect this bullshit macho façade you’ve been wearing since we were kids! You act like you have to hide everything from me! I’m just the guy you put on the mask for! I’m the liability! I-I’m the freak you have to protect yourself from with lies and cold shoulders.”

“Sam,” Dean felt a tightness in his chest. 

“You won’t let me help! And I just want you to have someone you can talk to about this stuff before it gets bad!”

“I talk.”

“To Ellen. And I—I talk to a bunch of strangers,” He swallowed; “It’s not easy for me either, Dean… I can’t feel half my body. I-I’ve got tubes coming out of me—I have to go around with my guts ending out my side! I can’t even breathe without help… I just—I need you! I need my brother, alright! And you don’t need me anymore. You never have—” 

“You think I don’t need you?”

“You left me… You and Jo. You went after Jesse and Cas and you forgot me.”

“I didn’t forget you—“

“You ran out the door and left me.”

“Because we were in a hurry—“

“Yeah, and I’m an anchor. I’m just holding you back—“

“I thought Cas was gonna kill the kid! We didn’t have time!”

Sam’s jaw clenched and he looked away, shoulders tense.

Dean ground his teeth, “You showed up and shut it down before the kid went Jason Voorhees and started killing everyone for ‘Mommy’. You talked him down in less than a minute… While I was freaking out, I might add. You picked up my slack. Legs or no. You did the job, you didn’t hesitate.”

“That’s not the point—“

“No? Because that’s a pretty good point if you ask me… You crawled up half a flight of stairs. You drove all the way to Nebraska because you realized the case was bigger than we’d thought. You stopped the kid, not me and Jo—We screwed the pooch on that one,” He rolled his eyes; “You stopped him, not with a gun, but by talking to him. YOU did that.”

Sam felt his lips lift at the edges, then slowly fall once more.

“If you hadn’t calmed Jesse down Cas would still be six inches tall and plastic… Where do you think I’d be then?”

Sam choked down a lump in his throat; “Cas means a lot to you.” 

Dean looked at his hands. 

Sam felt the frustration building again but he swallowed it down. “Are you ever gonna tell me what happened?”

“You know what happened.”

Sam shook his head. “I know what I’ve seen… But there’s more than that. What really happened with the djinn? What happened that made Cas this important? Who is he to you besides an angel with a familiar face?”

Dean’s mouth was dry. He shook his head; “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.” 

Dean looked at him, saw the urgency and need in his brother’s face, the longing to just pick things part and understand them. Pull back the mystery of the universe and stare at the pale shivering underbelly of creation. 

It had always been a flaw of Sam’s, his need to understand everything; his need to find purpose, and meaning in everything. His need to impress power over the things that frightened him or confused him by taking them down to their bare elements and discovering what made them tick. Dean had always known that Sam’s curiosity would probably be the death of him, even as he encouraged it.

But, this? This was asking too much. It was too deep, too close.

Dean shook his head and turned away, “No.” 

0-0-0

0-0-0

0-0-0


	51. The Acquisition of Faith and the Acclimation of Grace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is a chapter long in coming. I hope you enjoy! 
> 
> Sorry it took so long.

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

 

“I want to help, Dean. Just—give me the chance. Let me help you.”

 

Dean turned his face away.

 

Sam let out a huff of breath that almost sounded like a sob. “Please.”

 

“Why do you want more on your plate, huh?”

 

Sam pursed his lips. Eyes lowering, “Because if I can help you then maybe my problems aren’t so bad… Maybe I can deal with this if I can—“

 

“If you can be useful?”

 

Sam’s jaw tightened.

 

“Jesus, Sam. You—“ He inhaled deeply and let it out; “You don’t have to prove your worth… You’re my brother—Yeah, you’re a pain in the ass sometimes, but… You’re the same person. Doesn’t matter what happened to your back or your legs or your—your guts. You’re still my little brother and one of the best hunters I know.”

 

Sam’s chin twitched, lips compressed, hair fanning over his brow and eyes.

 

“It—“ Dean’s jaw tightened and he turned away, stared out the window and tried to force the words out, “I cant put this on you too. Not this. Not now.”

 

“But I can help!”

 

“Maybe you can… but I don’t know what kind of help I need. I don’t even understand it anymore—I thought I did but,” He twisted a curling lock of Sputnik’s fur around his finger; “Something happened in Alliance. I don’t know what it was, but I felt this… I can’t even describe it. I felt this STUFF from Cas when Jesse brought him back.”

 

“You felt something from Cas?”

 

“Yeah… We—  Uh—the grace he gave me kind of—it Resonates with his… or that’s what he calls it. Resonating. But, it kind of picks up on it like a walkie-talkie. Sometimes I can look at him and feel what he’s feeling, others, he can like, talk to me in my head.”

 

“You mean telepathy? He can communicate with you telepathically?” Sam flipped his fingers, his eyes were wide; “And Empathically?”

 

“Yeah, back and forth.”

 

“You can do it too!” Sam’s face was split by a wide grin. “That—that’s amazing! What’s it like?”

 

Dean shrugged uncomfortably; “Kind of weird… Sometimes it’s just words—well, the IDEA of words. I can’t tell if he’s angry or not. It’s worse than sending a text message.”

 

Sam snorted; “So, you can’t hear his voice? It’s just like… like words?”

 

“It’s like he puts the thoughts in my head,” Dean nodded, “Unless he’s feelin’ all smitey… Then it’s like a fog horn right in my ear.”

 

“Smitey?”

 

Dean gave him a hard look, “But it was different. When Jesse brought him back it was different, MORE. I—I felt something. I… I felt what he felt and… And it freaks me out.”

 

“Why does it freak you out?”

 

Dean swallowed; “Because I don’t know if it’s real… I don’t know if what he’s feeling is real, or if everything was just the angels screwing with me.”

 

“Everything? You mean—EVERYTHING, everything? The thing with the Djinn too?”

 

Dean nodded.

 

Sam’s eyebrows lifted, mouth gaping open; “Can they do that? I mean—Is that possible?”

 

“I don’t know,” He shifted his hips uncomfortably against the car seat. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

 

Sam seemed disappointed, face falling into a pout, but he shook himself and nodded; “Okay… I—uh… Can I?” He made a vague gesture between the two of them.

 

“You’re not gonna hug me, are you?” Dean’s brow crinkled.

 

“No! No—Uh—Do you want one? A hug?”

 

“No.”

 

Sam nodded and picked at the edge of the acceleration rail. He breathed in and out and in again; “I’m frustrated… Sexually.”

 

“Aw, cripes,” Dean slouched dramatically, almost dislodging Sputnik from his lap. He rubbed a hand over his face.

 

Sam’s jaw was tight, lips practically invisible.

 

Dean looked at him then at the dog; “Fine…” He pivoted in his seat, “Lay it on me.”

 

Sam winced, but seemed to relax. “Just forget it—“

 

“Sam… I’m trying, OK? So just—just talk.”

 

He looked at Dean with his eyes narrowed, tried to decide if his brother was going to retreat and refuse to actually listen, or what exactly was going on in his head. But Dean was just looking at him evenly, albeit a bit uncomfortably. He sighed, turned his eyes to the dash and flexed his hands; “Nothing works, and I feel like—like a pervert because it’s all I can think about whenever I see her and—And I can’t feel anything,” He swiped his tongue over his teeth, bared them like an animal; “I’ve read these articles about paraplegia and how it affects the sex drive and there are cases where it like—Where different parts of the body that maintain sensation become erogenous and—Uh, erogenous means—“

 

“I know what an erogenous zone is.”

 

“Okay, well—uh—There’s this guy who gets Feelings in his thumb and another who has it in his tongue and—“

 

“Woah, woah… Wait, his thumb?” Dean seemed both confused and fascinated.

 

“I know!” Sam’s eyes widened; “There was this whole video about it… But I—I’m just—“ He motioned to himself like Vanna White.

 

“Nothing?”

 

“Nothing,” He wrinkled his nose bitterly; “I haven’t had an orgasm in—“

 

“I don’t need to know that.”

 

Sam rolled his eyes and raked a hand over his head; “The doctors keep telling me that I might get sensation back in some places, that the peripheral nervous system can regenerate… I might get some feeling back… and that’s a big IF… Chances, they say. ‘There’s a CHANCE’. I am SICK of ‘CHANCES’. This is what I have now, this is what I’ve got to work with—and I didn’t used to think sex was such a major part of my life—it’s nice, don’t get me wrong—but there are other things just as good! But now!” He snorted, eyes falling shut, “I never thought I would miss masturbating.”

 

Dean made a hushed choking noise and scratched his nose.

 

“I know that sounds weird, but I just—I’m tired of hurting and feeling disgusting. I just—I just wanna feel good again.”

 

Dean dropped his head back against the seat.

 

“Sorry,” Sam scratched his neck… “I just—I can’t talk about that at Group… Not around her—I just—“

 

“You don’t have to explain… I get it. Sometimes you just gotta say it.”

 

Sam nodded, seemed embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

 

“It’s stress relief… I used to do it for stress relief.”

 

“Used to?”

 

Dean shrugged one shoulder toward his ear; “Can’t.”

 

Sam nodded; “You—uh—Just not happening? Or is it kind of a… traumatic thing.”

 

Dean rubbed his brow; “Jesus, no wonder people think we’re gay for one another,” He let out an explosive breath; “I don’t wanna talk about this with my brother.”

 

Sam’s lips compressed; “Would you talk to Ellen?”

 

“Christ, NO!”

 

“No?”

 

“No! She’s—Just no!”

 

“What about Janie?”

 

“What? NO!”

 

“She’s a psychologist, this stuff—it’s kind of in her job description.”

 

“No.”

 

Sam hesitated, “Would it help if I said I’ve talked to her?”

 

“About masturbating?”

 

Sam wrinkled his nose, face pinched like he’d bitten into a lemon wedge. “About lots of stuff.”

 

Dean stared at him silently for a moment, body tense, then down at Sputnik who’d started snoring softly against his thigh. He could feel her insides moving, it felt weird-- “Okay.”

 

Sam’s eyebrows jogged up toward his hairline; “What—Really?”

 

Dean nodded slowly, brows pulling down; “Yeah.”

 

“D’you wanna talk to her now? I—I can take you back—“

 

“No… No, that girl was there—I,” He rubbed his face, “I think I scared a bunch of rape survivors earlier, I’d rather not go back.”

 

“They’d understand if you talked to Casey—“

 

“I already agreed to talk to Janie, don’t push it.”

 

Sam’s teeth clicked and he nodded; “Okay,” He inhaled deeply and let it out in a whoosh, tension easing from his shoulders, “Okay.”

 

0-0-0

 

Castiel’s hair is dirty. It’s one of a myriad of things Dean notices when he climbs out of the car. One of many things, but it’s the one thing he chooses to focus on instead of Bobby humming to himself as he finishes carving away pieces of a deer carcass hanging from a chain in the empty bay opposite the Impala.

 

Cas sitting in the driver’s seat of his truck, door open left leg out and dangling above the ground. The engine is still slowly ticking, cooling, so he must have only arrived moments earlier. His clothes are rumpled, shoes untied. His hair is dirty and his cheeks are covered in dark hairs— His mouth looks strangely pale. Dean looks at him, trains all his focus on him, not the bone and blood and the satisfaction on Bobby’s bearded face.

 

The angel looks back, blinks slowly, tiredly. Breathes in and some of the tension seems to melt from his face.

 

Dean feels weak in the knees. And it has less to do with the blood and cheerful whistling at his back than he would ever admit. 

 

Sam is already rolling up the ramp into the house, face determined. Jo and Ellen are talking loudly from inside, something about steak sauce and fried onions from the garden.

 

Now that Dean’s thinking about it, he can detect the hint of seared meat in the air, that slight, gamey scent of wild beast, cut and cooked, and served alongside Ellen’s macaroni salad and baked potatoes.

 

Sputnik waddles up the ramp after Sam and darts inside as he’s pulling open the door to roll in.

 

Dean turns back to the angel and staggers over, lays a hand firmly on his shoulder and pushes him back into the truck. Shoves him harder so he slides across the seat, legs hiked up to swing over the gearshift. He throws himself behind the wheel and slams the door.

 

“Dean?” Sam calls over his shoulder; “What’re you—“

 

But Dean’s already backing the truck out of the yard, turning in a tight, skidding one-eighty and heading for the gate. His phone rings and it’s only when he’s flipping it open that he realizes he’s shaking, holds it to his ear and takes a long, deep breath before he speaks. “Yeah?”

 

“Dean, are you OK? What happened?” Sam’s controlling his voice well, but Dean can feel the unease behind it.

 

“I’m fine—just—just the smell. Not after everything…” He clears his throat, “Uh—Tell Ellen…” He lets the sentence hang unfinished, hears Sam sigh in disappointment, but no malice.

 

“Yeah, it’s okay. I didn’t think… Just, be sure to eat something, if you can. Want me to save a potato for you?”

 

“No… I’ll-I’ll find something.”

 

Sam hums in agreement; “Ellen says to be careful. I’ll make sure the place is aired out by the time you come back.”

 

Castiel says nothing throughout the entire exchange, just sort of slumps there breathing loudly. Dean doesn’t notice it for almost six miles, then it’s all he can hear. A clogged wheezing sound and a glassy weariness around Castiel’s eyes.

 

Dean chooses to say nothing until they’re driving past the Sioux Falls city limits and onto open highway heading east. It’s another half hour before Dean spots a restaurant. Denny’s he thinks. Can’t be sure when his eyes keep tracking over to Castiel, the way he’d slowly started to melt against the passenger door, lids drooping. The sickly pallor of his skin beneath the glow of streetlamps.

 

It’s once they’re stopped in the parking lot and Dean has already exited the truck that he notices the delicate tremble in Castiel’s chin, made all the more disturbing by the diffused jaundice light of the restaurant’s signage. It takes him a moment to realize it’s not emotion, but chill. A fine rash of gooseflesh beneath the displaced cuff of his jacket.

 

Dean blinks slowly, takes a moment to actually SEE the angel, how curled inward he’s become in his stolen flesh. How damnably MISERABLE he looks.

 

Dean moves without really asking permission, pulls open the passenger door and presses the backs of his fingers against Castiel’s jaw, then his temple. His skin is warm and damp with a thin layer of sweat.

 

“You OK, Cas?”

 

Blue eyes crack open and regard him in cool derision, nose wrinkling—He sneezes.

 

Dean yanks his hand back with a wince, rubs it on his shirt front in fear of sneeze droplets. Remembers from somewhere that a sneeze travels at close to sixty miles an hour and rolls his lips back from his teeth. “What the hell happened? Are you _sick?”_

 

Castiel sneezes again. Says nothing. If anything he looks frightened, defensive.

 

Dean feels eyes on him even though they’re the only people standing in the half empty parking lot. “What happened?”

 

“I got wet,” His voice is strained, barely audible, more a hiss than a rasp.

 

“Did you eat after midnight too?”

 

Castiel stares at him, eyes widening; “Why?”

 

“Forget it,” Dean sighed and pushed his hair off his brow; “It’s probably just a cold… Used to happen to me a lot—You should have Sam tell you about the time I got us found by the Gripe we were hunting because I sneezed… Like something outta’ Bugs Bunny.”

 

“It seems accurate,” Castiel hunched his shoulders inward a little farther. “I’m deteriorating faster than I’d feared.”

 

Dean blinks; “Deteriorating?”

 

Castiel hesitated, then nodded; “My grace is failing… It’s there, and ‘charged’ if you will, but I can’t use it.”

 

“Nobody’s put a condom on it, have they?”

 

Castiel hesitates, face scrunched up in confusion. He seems to be thinking about the phrase, then shakes his head; “I don’t appreciate you comparing my impotence to the use of prophylactics.”

 

Dean feels his face heat.

 

Castiel sighed weightily and eased himself back into the car; “You go ahead. I’ll… I’ll wait here.”

 

“I’m not leaving you in the car when you’re sick.”

 

 “I wouldn’t want to spread the bacteria, that’s just what it wants… All these little lifeforms multiplying inside of this body… It’s revolting,” He sneezed again, didn’t even try to cover his face.

 

Dean ducked back a few steps, rubbed his hands on the thighs of his jeans; “Little advice, Cas… Duck and cover,” He curled his nose and upper lip back; “Just—just blowing like that you’re spreading bacteria. Like a big—Mojo hyped cloud of bacteria,” He made a circular motion toward Castiel’s vessel.

 

“There were tissues, but they’re gone now.”

 

Dean nodded, rolled his eyes skyward thoughtfully and with a sigh circled back around to the driver’s door, climbed in and started the engine.

 

“Dean—“ The angel said; “You promised Sam you would eat—“

 

“And I’m going to, you just—just calm down,” There was a Wal-Mart in the same plaza as the Denny’s. He had no problem leaving Cas in the truck long enough to go inside. He came out a few moments later with a paper bag in his hand.

 

Castiel watched him, said next to nothing, wound up dozing off, the hum of DEAN so close, soothing. The rumble of the truck’s engine, the energy cycling through them both and the truck’s frame. It almost reminded him of the cycle of grace in heaven, but this—this was somehow more but less. Different in a way that eased an ache in his core. He couldn’t place it exactly, thought perhaps it came from the hands and muffled voices from within the sealed off portion of memory.

 

He found himself focused on it, the thin membranous wall between his consciousness and these things. Wondered, not for the first time, why they had been taken from him in the first place. How. Had heaven been in the right to do so? Or was there a reason a sense of wrongness seemed to radiate from it.

 

“Cas—Hey, wake up.”

 

He pried his eyes open, they felt hot, gritty, and sticky. Dean was standing at his shoulder.

 

“Come on,” He slid a hand under Castiel’s shoulders and drew him out of the truck carefully. Guided with a hand on his back.

 

“Why are we at a hotel? You—Does Bobby Singer not wish for me to—“

 

“We’re at a hotel for two reasons… One, you’re sick and I don’t want Sam to get sick… And two, you’re sick and I don’t know what graced up flu would do to people… normal people.”

 

“What about you?”

 

“I figure I’ve got some grace in here, so maybe it won’t do anything too terrible.”

 

The hotel room wasn’t anything particularly luxurious, nor was it grungy and questionable as most of the hotels Dean had stayed in tended to be. This one was a fair middle ground, clean and plain and unmemorable as north-western hotels tend to be.

 

They didn’t even charge by the hour. Whole night or bust.

 

Dean pulled the thin polyester coverlet off the bed and piled it in the corner, urged Castiel to sit and started pulling deftly at his coat and jacket.

 

Castiel didn’t protest… he didn’t try to help either, just sat there with a disgusting drip hanging on the tip of his nose and his eyes half lidded, letting Dean move him about as he pleased.

 

“Shoes off.”

 

Castel whined, wiggled his toes in his shoes and Dean muttered, dropped into a crouch and plucked at the laces, pulled them off and dropped them aside. “I’m not taking your pants off, you do that yourself or you’ll sleep in them.”

 

Castiel’s head flopped to his other shoulder and he sighed, almost a whimper, but pushed to his feet and worked his belt off. Then, without even touching the button and zipper, pulled in the muscles of his stomach and his slacks slid haltingly down his thighs and dropped to the floor.

 

Dean stared. Felt a twist of memory in his chest and had to look away. At least the bastard was wearing underwear this time. Though he supposed anybody with a modicum of sense would in that wool blend.

 

Castiel scuffed the blankets back and slid under them, teeth chattering. Watched with watery blue eyes as Dean moved around in the tiny kitchenette. Sat the bag of his purchases on the counter top beside the stove and pulled out cans and packages.

 

“I wish I could do things like you do,” Castiel rubbed his prickly face on the pillow. “You don’t have any hesitation… You just do them. You know all the steps.”

 

“What?” Dean narrowed his eyes, looked up from the sauce pan he was tending with a spoon and the salt shaker.

 

Castiel snuffed wetly; “You know what your feelings mean… You don’t have to question yourself.”

 

“I question myself.”

 

“You misunderstand me.”

 

Dean hummed noncommittally.

 

“You know when you feel sick, or hungry, or sad… you know when food tastes good and when it doesn’t… I have to rely on what I know about chemicals and hormones… I don’t experience it, I analyze it.”

 

Dean turned and stared at him; “Say that again in English.”

 

Another sigh; “You don’t have any idea about what chemical reactions take place within your body, what electrical stimulation to nerves in your spinal cord and brain. You simply take the results of these activities and translate them into emotions, or sensations… I’m trying—but I… it confuses me,” He shifted, gave a hard febrile shudder; “It scares me.”

 

Dean’s jaw clenched and he turned off the stove burner with a rough twist of the dial. Left the sauce pan sitting there simmering and approached the bed. Sat at Castiel’s hip and stared down at him. “Why do you wanna mix yourself up in this? Do you know what I’d do to be able to turn all this shit off?” He folded his hands together and tightened his fingers.

 

“But why? I don’t understand why you would want to stop it. Feeling—feeling is glorious. It’s instinctual. You don’t have an—nee—ah--” He sneezed loudly, snuffed and rubbed his forearm under his nose; “—Any worry that w-what you’re feeling is false, or indecipherable.”

 

“What?”

 

Castiel took a deep, clogged breath and let it out, “You know what you feel, innately. You—you’re never confused about it, it just is.”

 

“Cas. Confusion is my home, man. It’s where I live. I haven’t had clear-cut feelings about stuff… ever. Unless it was food or ganking monsters.”

 

Castiel shook his head and lowered it to the pillow, eyes drooping; “You know what you feel… whether or not you choose to accept it is based entirely on the convoluted social constructs you choose to adhere to.”

 

Dean blinked. Remained silent.

 

Castiel’s nose scrunched; “Why do humans have to complicate everything? You—you’re so complicated. You m-make up strict rules that perpetuate misery, yet expect everyone to uphold them even to their own detriment.”

 

“I think that’s the fever talking.”

 

Those blue eyes cracked open and scowled at him; “Why do humans enjoy making one another miserable?”

 

“Because most humans are jackasses, now c’mon. I got some cold pills with your name on them.”

 

“That’s highly improbable.”

 

“Humor me, Cas…” He pushed to his feet and retrieved the package from the bag on the counter, filled a coffee cup with water from the tap and brought it back to the bed. “Just two—No, the blue ones. They’ll make you sleep.”

 

“I don’t sleep.”

 

“Sure you don’t.”

 

Castiel prodded the capsules in his palm and scowled at them. “Chemicals—You’re feeding me chemicals—“

 

“It’s MEDICINE.”

 

“I don’t need medicine. I don’t get sick—“

 

“Tell that to the bacteria doing the horizontal hustle in your sinuses.”

 

“Bacteria reproduce asexually—and I tried that, they wouldn’t listen.”

 

Dean rolled his eyes and nudged the angel’s hand a little closer to his frowning mouth; “Take the pills, Cas. For me.”

 

Castiel looked at him and there was something heavy in his gaze, as if he could see right through Dean’s clothes and skin and bones into the very essence of him. Hell, maybe he could, Dean had no real idea how that shit worked.

 

He put the pills in his mouth and swallowed them, gulped down the water as if dying of thirst and dropped back onto the bed, eyes still locked on Dean.

 

Being the focus of Castiel’s stare wasn’t new, but it felt different. More unsettling. Dean climbed to his feet and went back into the kitchenette, came back with a bowl of soup and a spoon. Held them out wordlessly until Castiel sighed and levered himself up to sit against the headboard.

 

“Probably needs salt,” Dean retreated to the kitchen again and came back with his own bowl, shared the salt shaker until he realized Castiel was just sprinkling the soup liberally without even taking into consideration it would probably just taste like sea water now. He took it back and muttered to himself as he settled down at the table on the other side of the room. Made himself eat without looking or taking a moment to appreciate the texture. It was easier, especially when his mind kept circling back to the sound of a blade in flesh—or the remembered pain of it.

 

They ate in relative silence, until Dean looked up and saw Castiel had pushed his empty bowl onto the side table and bundled the blankets around himself.

 

“’alright?”

 

Castiel nodded, eyes drooping. “Salty.”

 

Dean snorted; “Next time, taste it before you dump salt on it.”

 

A nod—a sneeze.

 

Dean rinsed the bowls and sauce pan out, left them upside down in the sink to dry and went to the bed, noticed a sheen of sweat across Castiel’s brow and upper lip and a peculiar shifting of his legs under the blankets. He touched him gingerly, the backs of his fingers to his brow and cheek. He shook his head and found the TV remote in the bedside drawer, ran through the channels until he found some mindless cartoons—he thought it was Ren and Stimpy—Something he remembered laughing hysterically at when he’d been younger and Sam had thought was gross.

 

Sam.

 

Shit.

 

Dean shut himself in the bathroom and leaned his hips against the sink, dialed Sam’s number and waited for an answer.

 

“Dean?”

 

“Yeah… Uh—I’m not gonna make it back tonight.”

 

“Oh? What’s up?”

 

Dean scratched the back of his neck; “Cas’s sick… I don’t know what grace does to the common cold, so I’m…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

 

“Did you eat something?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yes. I made soup—“ He yawned.

 

“He really sick?”

 

“Dripping nose, sneezing, fever—you name it. I gave him some cold pills—the blue ones. So maybe he’ll sleep it off.”

 

“Wow… I—I didn’t think angels could get sick.”

 

Dean worked his tongue at the backs of his teeth; “He’s kind of running on the backup generators… I can’t explain it, but for some reason he can’t tap into his mojo like he used to.”

 

“Is he gonna be OK?”

 

“Yeah, he’s just… kinda getting more—more human, yanno?”

 

Sam hummed noncommittally. “What’s he doing now?”

 

“Got him watching cartoons until those pills kick in.”

 

“Will you be OK?”

 

“Yeah, I mean—I’m kind of graced up too, so it shouldn’t hurt me any more than a cold would normally.”

 

“I meant are you OK being there with him alone… After what happened?”

 

Dean had a sudden lump in his throat he couldn’t swallow around. He had to fight it for a few seconds before he could manage.

 

“Maybe,” Sam said softly, “You should talk to him about it?”

 

“Sam—“

 

“It’s not going to get any easier.”

 

“Don’t pull that whole band-aid bullshit with me… I—He’s outta his mind on cold pills right now I’m not—It probably wasn’t anything anyway I’m just—Shut up.”

 

Sam exhaled, Dean could almost hear an indulgent, sad smile in it… the bastard. He cracked open the door and peered out, couldn’t see Castiel’s face from there, but he could see the hunch of his shoulders under the blanket and hear the soft sound of his breathing. Feel the gentle pull of whatever connection bullshit they had between them.

 

“Look, Sam… I—I’m—“

 

“You’ve got your medication, right?”

 

Dean patted himself down. He didn’t. He didn’t have his meds and Sputnik wasn’t there. What if something awful happened? He took a deep breath; “One dose isn’t gonna hurt anything.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“Yeah—I’ve missed more and nothing’s happened. I’ll be fine,” He wished he actually believed that.

 

“Okay… So—uh—I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Dean?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

Sam’s throat clicked as he swallowed, “Nevermind… I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

 0-0-0

 

Dean wasn’t exactly asleep. Hovering somewhere, unnaturally vigilant, with that little skim of grace spread out thin and wide and quiet—

 

He could feel Castiel beside him on the bed muted, hushed—and flickering with minute activity.

 

The next second Dean became aware of a wave of unease, that moved quickly to frustration and ricocheted across the board to terror just half a heartbeat before Castiel lurched upright in the bed with a shriek and a swipe of his balled fists, partially glowing with grace. The light bulb in the corner lamp burned bright and fizzed, barely burning.

 

Dean almost rolled off the bed in shock, but came up again when the sound in Castiel’s throat became something low and all too human.

 

“Cas—CAS!” He scrambled up onto the bed again and into the angel’s personal space, put a hand on either side of his face and found it wet with sweat, shivering violently.

 

Castiel’s eyes were open wide, grace bright in the darkness, like the glow of lightning in distant clouds.

 

“Easy, take it easy,” Dean pushed a hand over his head, found his hair damp as well. “What is it? What happened.”

 

Castiel’s teeth were grit, jaw tight. Breath coming in quick, hectic jerks.

 

“It’s alright—just breathe—breathe for me and tell me what happened.”

 

Castiel’s hands opened slowly, fingers splayed wide, searching tendrils of grace reaching out into the room, the next, delving into the very fabric of reality. Dean felt it like static or a dip in the barometric pressure, like titanic arms around him, pulling him close. He shifted his body nearer.

 

“What happened, Cas—you gotta talk to me or I can’t help.”

 

His voice came out in a hiss, eyes darting around the room; “You—you were tied to a chair—over there,” He motioned vaguely toward the kitchenette, “A-and that h-horrible dog thing from the television was m-making you eat the c-cat creature’s t-technicolor feces… T-then they p-pulled your bones out through your m-mouth a-and made them dance! B-but it wasn’t the creatures from the television it—it was Michael and Lu-Lucifer sh-shaped like them and t-their eyes tore from their bodies and loo-LOOKED at me!” He shook his head free; “W-we have to leave, we have to leave, they’re coming!”

 

For half a moment Dean considered the fact that Michael and Lucifer may actually be about to descend up on them—then the reality of what Castiel was saying, coupled with the violent shaking of the angel’s stolen body and the sheer amount of sweat rolling off of him pulled Dean up short. “Hey, it’s OK! They’re not coming—Nobody’s coming—“

 

“I s-SAW THEM! They were so ANGRY! They w-were h-hurting you!” His hands tangled in Dean’s t-shirt and he hid his face in Dean’s throat, coughed loudly and snuffed back the wetness in his nostrils; “They’re coming!”

 

“I think you were dreaming.”

 

Cas shook his head vehemently; “I have to—we have to go. We have to go back where it’s safe. It’s not safe here!”

 

“Cas, look at me… Baby, look at me,” He caught the angel’s face again and tilted it up, “I think your fever broke and you were dreaming and it turned into a nightmare.”

 

His eyes didn’t stop scanning, peering through everything and out into the openness of the world.

 

“Cas, easy… I’m right here, I’m OK. It was just a dream—“

 

“But they could! They COULD! They could do that and I wouldn’t be able to stop them. I-I can’t do anything like this—I can’t—I can’t save you!” And his breath hitched hard, fingers in spasm.

 

Dean dragged him closer, bracketed his body in with his arms and legs and bunched the blankets up around his shivering. “Cas, it’s OK. It was just a dream… Can you feel me right now? I—I’m right here. I’m not hurt. Nobody’s coming.”

 

Castiel’s warms wrapped around him, pulled him close and tighter than was humanly possible but Dean didn’t mind—felt the pressure of the angel’s grace pushing against his own and—and welcomed it.

 

Felt the wash of fear and ignorance—and the fear of that ignorance. Castiel didn’t know what was going on and it terrified him. He was caught, adrift on the sensations of his stolen body and he had no way of controlling or identifying what was happening.

 

“You’re OK,” Dean murmured brushed his lips to the angel’s cooling brow. “I won’t let you go.”

 

“You—you’re not hurt? The cat thing and dog thing didn’t hurt you?”

 

“No, they didn’t hurt me.”

 

A hand snaked up under his shirt and Dean flinched, felt cool fingers press in hard over his heart—grace press in deeper and he wondered if Castiel was going to put a hand into his chest and fondle his soul again—But he didn’t, he didn’t have to. The whir of thoughts and sensation and dizzying NOISE in Castiel’s head seemed to begin to fade as soon as there was just that minimal contact.

 

He laid there tense and shivering for a long while, Dean’s arms tight around him, body rocking gently.

 

And before Dean could register a change he realized the feeling—the emotion at the forefront of Castiel’s mind was no longer fear, and hadn’t been for a while. It was something else. Something he couldn’t really name with certainty.

 

Sadness, want, surprise, and shame at appearing selfish and impure.

 

Longing…

 

Dean knew the taste of it. The charcoal burn of it in the back of his throat and pit of his stomach. The want to just—just be touched with kindness even if you don’t feel you deserve it, even if it makes you feel weak and hopeless and helpless.

 

“Cas?”

 

He burrowed his head farther against Dean’s neck, stubbornly—childishly ignoring him.

 

But Dean didn’t push. Bent his head to rest his chin and jaw on the angel’s crown and for once—just for this moment, didn’t question. Didn’t deflect and try to escape. Just for this moment he relished in it. Just gripped with all his limbs and every scrap of energy he possessed.

 

“Dean?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“Am I broken?”

 

He swallowed a shard of sorrow; “No… No, you’re not broken,” The words tasted thick, their shapes foreign to him. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

 

“I—I feel it though… Like I might be.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I-I’m not supposed to want this… I’m not supposed to want. The others—Heaven, they think I’m broken—darkened.”

 

“I don’t. You fixed me, didn’t you?”

 

Castiel went quiet, traced the scar on Dean’s chest shaped like part of his name.

 

“Maybe you’re not broken… but you’re—you’re fixed for the first time and you don’t know how to process it,” Dean found his hands moving, tracing patterns of stars and sigils of protection across Castiel’s shoulders. Felt him shivering with each one; “I got used to having all these little scars and aches and shit—but when—when you brought me back they were gone and I didn’t—I didn’t feel at home in my skin for a while. I-I had to think and think for a long time before I realized you’d given me a clean slate. I’m still me, but I—I’m new, yanno? I’m-I’m not broken anymore,” He felt a strange sense of reverence as he spoke, swallowed with a measure of difficulty and a burning sensation in his sinuses and the back of his throat.

 

“Dean?”

 

“Cas.”

 

He stiffened, then relaxed; “I think I know how to find God.”

 

Dean said nothing.

 

“He showed himself to us before… I—I think it’s a spell, and certain conditions have to be met before the amulet will work… I think it requires a profound bond realized, and a sunrise… It’s possible there are more intricate details yet to uncover… But I think if we can recreate what we did that morning… that we have a chance.”

 

Dean inhaled deeply and his throat bobbed; “Okay… Okay, where do we start?”

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0

 

0-0-0


End file.
